Giants decide to lighten up in chase for elusive title

Giants Netball are focused on lightening up a bit as they aim high in their third season together, according to captain Kim Green.

Giants Netball star Kim Green at the club’s base in Homebush. Picture: Hollie Adams

The Giants are focused on lightening up as they aim high in their third Super Netball season together, according to captain Kim Green.

The Giants fell just short of success in their first season, losing to the Lightning in a lopsided grand final, and finished minor premiers last year before bowing out of the finals in consecutive home losses.

No Super Netball side has won more matches through the competition’s first two seasons.

Green said that success weighed heavily on the team last year: “We really put a lot of pressure on ourselves. We expected a lot of ourselves. Which is a good thing but can also be your worst nightmare.

“The games we won by one, or the games we came from behind and won, we didn’t celebrate those.

“We said ‘thank goodness that’s done, it’s business as usual’, and walked out.”

This year the Giants have their eyes firmly fixed on filling an empty trophy cabinet, and Green thinks the key lies in enjoying the journey.

“We want to go through the season loving what we’re doing and knowing it’s more than just playing one hour of netball together a week,” Green said.

The 2019 Giants feel like a whole new team after a wave of departures from last year’s starting seven.

English centre Serena Guthrie returned home, and veterans Susan Pettitt and Bec Bulley both retired. Bulley is expecting her second child in the coming months.

Those spots have been largely filled with young talent developed in-house, and one splashy signing: Diamonds captain Caitlin Bassett.

Green said Bassett was the top target on her team’s recruitment list last year when they knew they needed to add a shooter: “She is a game winner. In the huge games she’ll always stand up. And it’s not often you can find players like that. I think she’s the most valued player in the world for that.”

Green is equally excited to see the fruits of the Giants talent development come to fruition.

Jamie-Lee Price, 23, has grown from a promising prospect at wing defence to an entrenched Diamond coming into this year’s World Cup.

Kiera Austin, 21, was elevated to the Diamonds squad in January after playing a handful of quarters in the 2018 Super Netball season. The young shooter enhanced her reputation as a future star last weekend with a strong showing at the preseason Team Girls Cup.

Guthrie’s minutes in the midcourt seem most likely to go to Amy Parmenter, a 21-year-old who has been a training partner with the Giants for the past two seasons. Parmenter found herself marking the most capped Silver Fern on the weekend

“She said to me as we were waiting to go back on court against Lightning, ‘I’m standing across from Laura Langman, is this real?’ When she said that I had tears in my eyes, because she has worked so hard,” Green said.