All set … Victoria University-Western Lightning captain Danni Stewart will play a vital role in the centre for her side this season.
By Tim Doutré
A NEW defensive end will be the key for Victoria University/Western Lightning in this year’s Victorian Netball League Championship Division.
The Lightning has had a handful of departures from the side that narrowly missed out on a finals berth last season and that has had a huge impact on the back half of the court.
“We’ve lost five players this year,” Lightning coach Joy Grubb said.
“So we have replaced them with quite young players: Jess Griffin, Fiona Themann, Erica Schippers, Morgan Bennetts and Julia Knott.
“The whole of the defence end is new, from wing defence to goal keeper they are all new players, so that takes little bit of adjusting.
“It’s a bit hard because they are all new players coming in. The attack end is roughly the same except for one goaler but we have been working fairly hard on the defence end with our transition through the court.
“They are coming along nicely. They are very receptive to any positive criticism.”
Youth will be the key in 2010 according to Grubb with the Melbourne Vixens’ Brooke Thompson the oldest player on the list at 26.
“Our oldest player in the whole team at this stage is 22 with the exception of Brooke Thompson.
“We are very young. We go from just turned 18 to 22 and they all fit in that gap.
“It’s a little bit unknown but I think they are coming ahead nicely. Naturally our goal is to make the finals and if we don’t do that we will aim to be as competitive as we possibly can and set a strong foundation for 2001.”
In her first year as captain, 22-year-old centre Danni Stewart, who has played at the club since her junior days, will be looked to for leadership in the young side.
“I think that is something that is very rare these days, that you have a player that stays loyal from her very early junior games right through to this level, so we are quite pleased really,” Grubb said.
“She is a great team player, very positive, very dynamic, not very tall, but she has very good agility.
“She is very fast on court. She just loves her netball and I think she is going to develop into a great leader.”
Last season the Lightning side missed out on the finals by a whisker but Grubb has produced some good results in recent years.
Last year the club missed by percentage, which she said was “a bit disappointing”.
“We lost a game towards the end to one of the lower teams by a goal and that cost us a spot in the finals,” she said.
“We obviously just didn’t have a good night that night and it cost us that berth. We don’t want that to happen again.
“The first year of comp in VNL (2008) we got as far as the preliminary final and then last year we missed out as I said, by percentage. So we are holding our own over the two years that we have been involved.”
Practice matches against the Melbourne Vixens and Ballarat have put the Lightning in good stead and wins in three out of the four Preseason Cup tournament has given them confidence.
“We were quite pleased with that (preseason cup) but we are not getting carried away with that,” Grubb said.
“We played Hume, who are the benchmark, and we went down to them but we won our other three so from our point of view that was very pleasing because they were all good wins, they weren’t just falling over the line.”
The Lightning takes on North East Blaze on Wednesday at the State Netball Centre in its Victorian Netball League season opener at 9.40pm.
