Cairns Netball: South Cairns young guns make cut for finals shot
The late-season form of young guns Emma Sorrell and Courtney Ford has South Cairns Cutters dreaming of a remarkable Cairns Netball finals berth with two regular-season games remaining.
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The late-season form of young guns Emma Sorrell and Courtney Ford has South Cairns Cutters dreaming of a remarkable Cairns Netball finals berth with two rounds of the regular season remaining.
Coach Alison Daniels said the duo had stepped up in the absence of injured stars Tess Plattfuss (ankle) and Alana Seymour (achilles) to keep the side’s finals hopes alive.
“The last couple of weeks they’ve really improved,” Daniels said.
“They’ve got that intensity and that fight for the ball and it’s really good to see.
“They’ve been outstanding moving the ball up the court alongside Gabby Walter in the midcourt.”
South Cairns sits in fifth spot on the Senior Division 1 ladder, with two wins and six losses from eight games, and is locked in a battle with the fourth-placed Saints, on three wins and five losses, for the last finals spot.
The Cutters will take on the winless Tigers in Round 9 and Sharks in Round 10, while Saints will face top-three sides Sharks and Leps to close out their season.
If South Cairns wins one of its last two games, and Saints lose both, the Cutters will likely finish in fourth spot and sneak into the finals with the better goal differential.
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“Hopefully we can just get the win against Tigers to bring us back to equal fourth position and then that will give us the best chance of playing finals,” Daniels said.
The Cutters showed how far they had come in the short season with a courageous performance against the finals-bound Leprechauns on Wednesday night, in which they pushed the 2019 grand finalists to the limit to trail by just two goals late in the game.
“We tried a couple of different combinations,” she said.
“We put Kristina (Armstrong) into goal attack and that seemed to work quite well.
“I think we gave Leps a bit of a scare but a few silly turnovers cost us and they were able to get a bit of a run-on. We’re still working each other out and where we fit in the team but the girls played with a lot more intensity.”
Originally published as Cairns Netball: South Cairns young guns make cut for finals shot