Masterton to host top netball teams

National Bank Cup netball sides Capital Shakers and Western Flyers will meet in the last of their pre-season matches at the Genesis Recreation Centre in Masterton on Saturday night.
It will be their final dress rehearsal before the Cup competition proper gets under way on April 28, with both teams set on improving on their 2005 campaigns when the Shakers placed eighth and the Flyers only one spot above them.
The hosting of a match featuring two NBC sides represents a first for Netball Wairarapa, and is further evidence of the boon the Genesis Recreation Centre has been for the sport in this region.
The facility has often been used for regional superleague matches over the last two seasons and players have been glowing in their praise of the playing surface there.
Former Silver Fern Waimarama Taumanu is coaching the Shakers this year and two New Zealand under-21 players in Jamilah Gupwell and Emma McGeorge are part of her squad.
Joining them will be captain Cushla Lictwark, Jo Haanstra, Sacha Coogan, Lovila Paki, Daya Pritchard, Katie Ritchie, Victoria Smith, Frances Solia, Geraldine Solia and Kylie Young.
The Western Flyers, who have their headquarters in the Manawatu, are coached by another former international Tanya Dearns (nee Cox). They too can call on a couple of New Zealand under-21 players in Kiley Hikawai and Charlotte Kight as well as New Zealand A team member Erika Burgess.
Others in their squad are Amber Bellringer, Jane Bingham, Lauren Burgess, Malu Fa'asavalu, Chanel Haggart, Rebecca Kupa, Lousie Moffett, Hayley Stockman and Florence Tauli.
The game between the NBC sides will start at 7pm and will be preceded at 4.30pm by an invitation match which will see the Wairarapa regional superleague team take on Naenae Collegians, which is also part of that superleague series.
It will be the second match in two days for the Wairarapa team, which on Friday night will play an official superleague match against Wellington East Old Girls, also at the Genesis Recreation Centre. This is the first of the play-off games with Wairarapa, the defending champions, battling it out for positions five to eight.
Wairarapa coach Marion Tulloch has no illusions about the task facing her side against Wellington East Old Girls, a team side she rates as little, if any, inferior to St Mary's Old Girls, a side which beat Wairarapa by more than 20 goals in the last of the preliminary round games.
Wellington East's big strength is the agility and pace at their attacking end, and Tulloch says Wairarapa will need to close them down in that area to have any chance of success.
"We can't afford to let them dictate the way the game is played???we need to be playing at our pace not theirs," she said.
Tulloch's intention for Saturday night's match against Naenae Collegians is to make positional changes, which will allow greater court time for two players who have been helping the side out over the latter part of the superleague season, Kelly Sargent and Sue Button.
"We've been really grateful for their support in covering injuries and the like and this is a good chance to give them a decent run," she said.
Meanwhile, former Australian netball coach Jill McIntosh will be in Wairarapa tomorrow and Saturday as part of her involvement with Netball Wellington Region.
Tomorrow morning will see McIntosh at the Genesis Recreation Centre in Masterton, where she will conduct a two-hour session mainly aimed at coaches of primary school and junior teams. Then in the evening she will a guest at the superleague match between Wairarapa and Wellington East Old Girls.
How to create a winning philosophy will be the theme, when McIntosh speaks at a breakfast function organised by Netball Wairarapa at St Matthew's Collegiate early on Saturday morning, and then she will address secondary school and club coaches at a session being held at the St Matthew's gymnasium.
McIntosh will be back at the Genesis Recreation Centre early on Saturday afternoon for a light training session being held by the Shakers, and she will then watch Wairarapa play Naenae Collegians and the Shakers v Flyers encounter.
It is intended McIntosh will return to the Wairarapa on May 24 and June 14 for coaching sessions with the Wairarapa under-15 and under-17 teams.