July 7, 2021
Returning home after four weeks on the road, Te Wānanga o Raukawa Pulse have a tricky double-header to contemplate as they strive to reignite their fortunes in the ANZ Premiership netball league.
The Pulse will play their rescheduled match against the Tactix in Porirua on Friday after the original June 27 outing was postponed due to the rise in Covid-19 Alert Levels at the time and will back that up on Sunday against the Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic in Wellington.
Undone by a faltering second half, the Pulse have had a few short days to shore up their approach against the Tactix who they meet for the second time in five days on Friday.
``I think we had probably become a little bit too focused on the outcome and we’ve realised that we’ve got to do what we’ve always done which is focus on the process, go back to basics and make sure we execute everything to the best of our ability,’’ Netball Central Director of High Performance, Wai Taumaunu said.
``We haven’t been doing that, so that’s what the focus has been going into this week.’’
With their hopes of making the play-offs all but dashed, there is still plenty of positive intent coming from within the Pulse camp to put to put things right, deliver the best product possible and play the role of spoiler with some freedom.
``It’s very important for us to keep challenging,’’ coach Gail Parata said.
``Hopefully, we’ll be at full strength this week and have all our players available and we can offer something different against the Tactix and get that performance we’re looking for.
`` The spirit is definitely still there and if we don’t make the play-offs, we still want to go higher in the rankings, so there’s plenty to play for.’’
After missing the last outing with a calf strain, the Pulse are hopeful their most experienced in-circle defender Kelly Jury will be good to go against the Tactix.
``There’s lots of things that we’ve just tried to work hard to fix up and after doing the analysis there are some easy fixes in there for us,’’ Parata said of the previous match.
``We turned over far too much ball and there were just too many simple errors that we need to rule out of our game.
``At the start of that game we were trying to play at their pace. It was really fast and furious and we were trying to run that as well and got caught on the other side of it.
``We’ve been successful when we’ve been patient with the ball, so if that means slowing it up and taking a few extra passes then we need to do that. We can also transition at speed on attack but it’s about when we do that and when we don’t.
``We absolutely want to redeem ourselves and the way that we played in that game. We had lots of different things happening with our lines and different personnel but we know we can play better and that we can do it against a team like this (Tactix), and from our perspective the performance will be better.’’
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