HAMILTON Kangaroos has the Camperdown Magpies firmly in its sights as the two teams meet at Leura Oval in round nine of the Hampden Football Netball League, as the competition reaches then halfway point of the season.
With five victories and a draw from the opening eight rounds, Hamilton Kangaroos is one of the most improved teams on the competition, while Camperdown only has a win over Portland two weeks ago to show for its efforts to date.
The Magpies are a young team that are still learning to gel together as a unit and Roos co-coach Emma Sommerville knows that her chargers cannot take the opposition lightly.
“We know they’re a young side with nothing to lose, so I have no doubt they’ll come out hard,” Sommerville said.
“We certainly won’t take them lightly, and as I said they have nothing to lose so we need to be prepared for anything.”
Hamilton suffered two losses in three games from round five through round seven to drop out of the top three, but a strong victory against Terang-Mortlake last Saturday has the Roos back on track.
All teams go through peaks and troughs with form, but the Kangaroos had failed to put together four consistent quarters of netball in the games that they lost, and the squad needs to maintain such efforts.
“Stringing together four consistent quarters is something we keep working on,” Sommerville said.
“We’ve seen a lot of change in the last couple of weeks where the girls are able to compose themselves and change tempo during a quarter rather than waiting until the break, which is great to see but we need to keep improving on that.”
Injuries have cruelled the Roos momentum with several players being injured over the past month which has meant that players have been brought into squad which led to changes in continuity.
“Madsie Phillips and Leesa Iredell have been missing for the last few games, while Hayley Sherlock also missed games, but we have the depth within the squad to cover these occurrences,” Sommerville said.
“Hayley returned to the court last week and stepped straight back into her role to be one of our best, but Kellie Sommerville is also out along with Phillips and Iredell this week, but all should return next week.”
