Swifts face Thunderbirds in must win clash

Eternal foes the Sydney Swifts and the Adelaide Thunderbirds face off tomorrow night in what surely be one of the highlight matches of the Commonwealth Bank Trophy (CBT) season.

The winner of the preliminary final at Sydney’s Superdome will head to Victoria’s State Netball and Hockey Centre next week to face the Melbourne Phoenix, who took out a close 47-49 win in their semi final win against the Swifts last Friday.

Swifts goal defender Allison Broadbent said that the minor premiers are ready for a return to form.

“We lost against the Thunderbirds two weeks ago,” she said.

“Since then we have been looking at a tape of the match and believe there are some areas we can improve in, which we will put into action tomorrow night.

“They have a good team and now that Peta (Scholz) is back, it strengthens their leadership on court and their defensive unit.

“But we know we can beat them and go into the match feeling positive.”

These two teams have a long history together as both teams have not missed the finals since 1997. The teams have met in various preliminary and semi finals, and played off in the 1998 CBT Grand Final where Adelaide accounted for Sydney.

Thunderbirds co-captain Peta Scholz said that her side’s recent dominance over their New South Wales foes is irrelevant, as both teams will lift for the occasion.

“We (Thunderbirds) did quite well against the Swifts in the early years but they have a more experienced line up these days than we do,” Scholz said.

But Scholz believes the Thunderbirds should not be discounted because of inexperience.

“We have new people in our team, different combinations and a totally different dynamics within the team,” she said.

“History is history, it cannot win the match for us, we have to do it and the only thing that remains the same throughout the history of the competition is that we still want to win.”

Adelaide accounted for its semi final foes the Melbourne Kestrels by a comfortable 13 points last week, and looks to have the form to take it up to the struggling Swifts, who now have had three losses in a row.

Not surprisingly, this drought of form has come at the hands of the Phoenix and the Thunderbirds, Melbourne having disposed of Sydney twice both at home and away in Wollongong last week, and Adelaide beating the Swifts 56-62 in their Round 14 clash.

The Swifts will surely have to lift on Thursday, as their accuracy in front of goal has been poor compared with their opponents.

While the accuracy of Catherine Cox and Megan Anderson has been hovering comfortably at around 80 percent, their losses have come against sides that have had higher goal accuracy. The Swifts’ accuracy against Melbourne plummeted last week when Cox finished with 77 percent and Anderson only 68, compared to Sharelle McMahon’s 80 and Eloise Southby-Halbish’s 89 percent.

Expect the Thunderbirds to be more inventive with their bench selections, and their goal attacks Kristen Heinrich and Natalie Medhurst will strive for scoring perfection. Heinrich and Medhurst both missed two of 66 shots taken in Round 14, and their accuracy was just as impressive when they faced the Kestrels last week.

Play starts at 7:30 pm.

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