Wellington 56
Auck-Waitakere 52
Defending champions Auckland Waitakere have suffered their first loss of the Lion Foundation netball championships, upstaged by the lesser fancied Wellington in Auckland yesterday.
Wellington, who were promoted to the first division only this season, have been the surprise package of the opening rounds of the provincial championships.
Over the past three weeks they have knocked over three of last year's semifinalists - Otago, Southland and Auckland Waitakere.
Wellington join Canterbury, who toppled Southland 46-42 in Christchurch on Saturday, as the only remaining unbeaten teams.
Yesterday's 56-52 win over the defending champions was arguably their strongest performance to date, although there were a few nervous moments for coach Gail Parata in the latter stages of the match, when the Auckland side launched a desperate comeback.
Trailing by 45-37 heading in to the fourth quarter, the home side finally started to display the intensity that had been missing for the first three periods, opening with five unanswered goals to close to within three of Wellington.
That proved as close as Auckland got in the final spell, as each time they had a chance to put Wellington under further pressure, the visitors were let off the hook with an unforced error from the opposition.
With veteran midcourters Ngarama Milner-Olsen and Frances Solia directing traffic around the attacking third in the final quarter, the Wellington forward line showed much more composure in the dying stages than their frantic Auckland counterparts.
But the platform for the win was really set early on, with Wellington racing out of the blocks to take a 12-3 lead after 10 minutes, prompting the home side to call a tactical "injury" time-out.
Wellington had clearly done their homework on their more fancied rivals, shutting down the flow of ball to prolific shooter Cathrine Latu by pushing the Auckland feeders wide and keeping them off the circle edge.
Auckland Waitakere coach Kiri Wills said she was disappointed her side did not cope with that early pressure, and struggled to match Wellington's intensity.
"We knew what to expect coming in to the game, we just initially didn't deal with that as well as we should have. And that just put us under pressure the whole game trying to fight back."
The early injury break went some way in helping Auckland remedy a few things that were going awry in the opening minutes, but Wills said it came too late to have much of an impact on the scoreline, with the home side still trailing 17-8 at the first break.
"Everyone knows those injury breaks are tactical, we're not hiding anything. They should have recognised it earlier and dealt with it more quickly."
After their rampant start, Wellington did well to maintain their healthy advantage in the face of several mini-surges from Auckland, leading 31-23 at halftime and 45-37 at the final turn.
That was in large part thanks to the efforts of Central Pulse defenders Cushla Lichtwark and Bessie Manu, who did an impressive job of containing Latu, Auckland's key strike weapon.
The Wellington pair were aggressive in defence, and despite the Mystics star shooter enjoying a handy height advantage, she still had to fight for every ball, which made the Auckland midcourt take a much more cautious approach with their feeding in attack.
While Latu was kept relatively quiet by her own standards, she still returned some impressive shooting statistics, landing 36 of her 39 shots at goal.
But even then she was outdone by her outstanding young rival down the other end of the court, Wellington shooter Charlene McKay, who hit 39 out of 42.
