Final flourish as Team Bath Netball impress at first British Fast5 All-Stars Championships
Team Bath Netball got the 2017-18 season off to an exciting start as they reached the final of the inaugural British Fast5 All-Stars Championships.
The Sitec-sponsored Blue & Gold lived up to their pre-tournament promise of playing vibrant and dynamic netball as they treated the crowd to three entertaining contests at London’s O2 Arena.
A nail-biting 19-18 win over Team Northumbria and an exciting 34-26 success against Severn Stars, inspired by some long bombs from Chelsea Lewis during the double-points power-play, put Team Bath through to the final against Loughborough Lightning.
The Blue and Gold performed superbly to hold the lead for almost all of a thrilling 12-minute match, with a three-pointer from Kadeen Corbin putting them 33-30 up in the last minute, only for player of the tournament Renske Stolz to land a decisive five-pointer for Lightning 15 seconds from time.
Director of Netball Jess Thirlby said: “To reach the final in the style we did was fantastic – the energy from the team was brilliant and the players showed real intuition and game sense in what is a much faster paced, dynamic version of the game.
“It’s always a bit gutting to lose but we felt we played a big part in what must have been a real spectacle for the neutral. Making finals and enabling players to experience that is always important and they did themselves and the franchise proud.
“Given the timing of the competition, very much at the start of our pre-season, we wanted to embrace it as a chance to have fun, field a team that has real purpose for our longer-term ambition for the Superleague season and maintain a thirst for winning.
“Anna [Stembridge] and I feel we stayed true to all of these objectives and the players were fantastic, it was great to see such promise from new combinations.”
Team Bath Netball are sponsored by Sitec and supported by partners Mogers Drewett and Investigo. Centurion Chartered Financial Planners are supporting the team’s performance analysis capabilities, Viper 10 are their Sportswear Supplier and Skins provide the team with compression wear.
Thank you to Chloe Neill for the pictures in the gallery and Matchroom for the feature image.
