Hi everyone, Nga here from inside the Pulse camp reporting back on what we have been up to leading into Round 8 – and what we as a team have been referring to as Phase 2 of the ANZ Championship.
Coming off a bye we wanted to start Phase 2 on a better note. We have been frustrated and disappointed with the performances we have put out on court and know that we are a better team than we are showing, so we wanted to focus this week on doing the basics well but firstly looking after our own job and doing that well!
Our training week starts:
It was a tough start to our week with fitness testing on Monday morning with our trainer Hotts and team training that night. We were back into the full swing of things to kick start round 8.
We had a full week of training and had a practice match on Wednesday night against some training partners and then played against the Mens team which is always a good physical battle leading into our weekend match. It gave us a good opportunity to put into practice the things we have been working on throughout the week, we were happy how we trained and came away feeling we have made progress, but also taking things away to continue to work on.
We flew out of Wellington Friday morning and arrived in Rotorua - before we had even landed we could smell the unique sulphur smell Rotorua is well known for!
Check out the previous post on the Pulse website to see what surprise the management had in store for us in the afternoon!
Game day: Everything we do is for preparation for the match.
We had a team breakfast and team meeting then headed off for our morning walk through at the Energy Event Centre. We all headed back to the hotel to put our feet up before we had our team lunch at café Lime, which was amazing. Great nutritious food and I highly recommend it! After lunch we headed back to the hotel to rest and prepare for the match before heading to the venue for our exciting game against the Magic.
After a good warm up lead by our Captain we all were ready to go, excited and nervous feelings all come at once but this is a good sign…..I think lol.
We all get called out on to court and before you know it the first whistle goes. We started strongly and stuck to the plan of attack, we got the first goal off their Centre pass that was a big lift for us and as the quarter unfolded it was goal for goal as we were calm and stuck to our guns and kept pushing on. At half time we were trailing by a couple of goals, but it was our 3rd quarter that the Magic punished us by capitalizing on our errors and were able to get a run on us. We grouped together in the 3rd quarter break knowing we needed to pull this together and finish strong! We were not giving up, we came out and won the 4th quarter 13-12 which was pleasing, we lost the match by 12 goals but we have made progress and will continue to work on putting all 4 quarters together, it’s in us, we now need to do it! Keep supporting us as without your support this wouldn’t be possible.
Our next game is against Mystics next Monday so we would love for you to come and support us!
Enjoy your week - and that’s it for now Folks
Nga