Tara Murray
The City West Falcons dominance in the Victorian Netball League championship has continued as they won their eighth title.
The team to beat all season, the Falcons showed exactly why in Wednesday’s grand final.
Facing Boroondara Express, the only team to beat the Falcons back in round one, the Falcons found something late to come away with the 64-53 win.
Falcons coach Marg Lind said it was a relief in the end to get the victory.
“I think we’ve been an excellent team all year, so we really wanted to finish it off,” she said. “We just like winning more than losing I guess. We work hard too and we want a reward at the end of all of that.
“We’ve done 106 sessions this year, it’s a nice reward to end of it all.”
On Wednesday night, the Falcons started off the better of the two teams.
A couple of Montana Holmes intercepts got the Falcons out to a 19-14 quarter time lead.
That extended to nine goals at the main break.
Lind said bringing Mel Oloamanu onto the court in goalkeeper in the first quarter really helped them bring size and physicality.
She said they struggled defensively a little bit to create turnovers with the Express being really patient.
The Express stuck around and reduced the margin to six goals at the last break.
It was back to three goals three minutes into the final quarter and stayed that way until the last five minutes.
“I was surprisingly settled,” Lind said. “I just thought if we could get a couple of goals ahead again, we would settle, which we did.
“Soli Ropati in critical moments did some excellent work defensively to turn it over and get us back into it.
“We probably just got a bit stagnant in the third and in patches in the last… We probably stood still too much to be honest.
“We needed to utilise our attack strategy a bit better and we did it. We failed to except in the last five minutes.”
With the game on the line the Falcons had to make a change with Oloamanu having to come off with the blood rule.
Sussu Liai accidently came on into goalkeeper instead of making the switch to goal defence and it paid off with her getting two turnovers.
Jane Cook finished with 50 goals for the Falcons. Lind said she thought Cook was their most consistent player on the night.
Lind said it caps off an outstanding season for the star shooter and that she did a lot right in the grand final.
Montana Holmes was awarded the best on court for a second straight grand final.
Lind said she thought Holmes had an excellent first quarter.
“Montana’s defensive effort in that first quarter was exceptional and she got lots of hand to ball.
“She’s had a really hard year going between Mavericks and Falcons and really pushing herself from a training point.
“Good on her, she deserved it.”
The premiership is the Falcons third in a row. In 2021, they were also on top of the ladder when the season ended early due to Covid-19.
Lind said it had been a season where they had got better as it went along.
She said there were several challenges off court and it had been a tough year.
“I think they’ve built really well across the season. I think we’ve used players really well., It’s been tricky, with Uneeq [Palavi] coming in and out all our Islanders coming in and out with the Pacific games
a few injuries across the season, losing Shimona [Jok] bringing Olivia [Cameron] in and trying to blood her in the second half and I thought it actually paid off for us.
“I think the community and connection between the girls got them all together. They’re probably actually one of the nicest teams we’ve ever worked with.
“Usually nice teams don’t win. They definitely share the love, that used to be one of our original mottos at Falcons.”
