Sunday 16th April 2023
After three weekends in a row flying around the countryside it was great to see WBOP play back in front of a home crowd at Trustpower Arena in Mount Maunganui. The girls arrived to the stadium on Sunday morning for their Captains Run beginning preparations leading into the game at 2pm. There was a massive crowd that came to watch who were very vocal which was amazing to see.
WBOP started the first quarter slowly with the visiting team forcing some errors pushing them to a 6-goal lead. Although WBOP picked up a lot of ball they struggled to finish. Both Kate Taylor and Arikinoa Shortland finished the quarter shooting at 100%
Quarter score: 10 – 16 to Mainland
In the second quarter, Liza Ball came into GD, Kaiya Kepa came into C and Georgia Bodle shifted into WA. Reeghan de Bono picked up three nice intercepts with Monica Faumui and Liza also putting on some great defensive pressure. On attack we continued to make a few errors losing the quarter by 1-goal
Half time score: 20 – 27 to Mainland
We saw WBOP settle a bit more in the third quarter with the error count decreasing slightly along with more intercepts from Liza, Reeghan and Monica. The team closed the gap to 3-goals at one stage winning the quarter 13 – 11.
Three quarter score: 33 – 38 to Mainland
The final quarter was a tight tussle with both teams fighting hard to score. WBOP were able to force quite a few oppositional errors but once again found it tricky to score them. It was a low scoring quarter with Mainland scoring 8 and WBOP scoring 7.
Final score: 40 – 46 to Mainland
WBOP continue to sit in 3rd position on the points table and head to Auckland to take on the Marvels on Sunday.
