The University of East London’s Netball Second team got back to winning ways after defeating Writtle College Women’s First team 32-13 at SportsDock.

The result saw UEL move up to third in the South Eastern 10B league, leapfrogging their opponents to sit eight points behind league-leaders the School of Oriental and African Studies First team, who they face next week.

Height Advantage

UEL Netball Captain Natalie Jones was delighted with the team’s performance and highlighted the importance of height in the team.

“I think we played really well as a team, there was a lot of good communication, which is something we can fall down on. We were all really calling for the ball, we had a lot of tall defenders who were able to play today, so that definitely helped us with the long balls. Shots were going in, which is obviously the main thing and I am really happy with the score,” she said.

Jones Sets the Tone

Straight from the off, UEL dominated proceedings, quickly taking the lead with Jones proving to be very accurate in front of the net, and by the end of the first quarter, UEL were leading 10-3.

The second quarter wasn’t much different to the first quarter, with UEL scoring freely and reducing Writtle College to very few scoring chances. Rebecca Mann and Jones were scoring with almost every opportunity they had in front of the net. With that, UEL went in at half time with a healthy lead of 20-6.

Writtle College had a mountain to climb in the final two quarters, whilst UEL had to hold onto their lead in order to see the game out. Writtle College came out fighting in the third quarter and scored some early points to try and reduce the deficit. However, some strong UEL defending prevented Writtle’s chances in the final third of the court.

In the final quarter UEL turned on the style. The defensive players held firm and cut-out multiple long balls, allowing the attacking players to quickly move the ball up the court and score as game ended 32-13 in favour of the hosts.

Final Match of 2017

Jones mentioned the importance of the victory in terms of confidence ahead of final match of the calendar year.

“We had a big loss last week which made us feel a bit crappy about it all, but we feel better now. I don’t think that it’s we ever lose confidence with a loss, because sometimes teams above you in the league are that little bit more prepared. It’s given us a big boost, we’ve got another game next week which was rescheduled so hopefully we’ll finish before Christmas with another win,” she said.

The East Londoners host table toppers the SOAS First Team on December 13th at SportsDock, which will be a vital game for UEL to win if they are to challenge for the title at the end of the season.

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Marcus Lee works at West Ham United. He provides match previews, match reports and news articles on the women’s team for the official club website and writes content for match-day programmes. During this time Marcus has developed key contacts with numerous members of the club.
Marcus is also a UELSports Multimedia Intern. He films and edits highlights of sports at UEL, with Lewis McKean, for the official UELSports social media pages.
He is the Rising East editor for West Ham United Women, Millwall and Millwall Lionesses.
Twitter: @marcus_lee