The 2011 ANZ Championship season had it all: thrills, spills, blistering speed, bullet-like passes, nail-biting moments, and the elation of victory.
This was the closest, most hotly contested season in the history of the ANZ Championship and right in the thick of the action was the NSW Swifts.
|Although the history books will show that the season didn’t end the way NSW Swifts coach Julie Fitzgerald would have liked, she was impressed with the character shown by the team in the final rounds.
“The highlight for us was how we finished off the season. We got off to a very slow start; we needed to win a few more games early on and that put pressure on us in the run of away games at the end of the season,” Fitzgerald said.
“But looking at that, I was very pleased with what they produced. That period of 10 days when we did all that travelling and every game we played was a grand final, I think they did particularly well to pull themselves through that.”
Fitzgerald pinpoints the Round 11 match against the Southern Steel in Dunedin when they clawed their way back to snatch victory by a solitary goal and a spectacular Kim Smith intercept to guarantee the win as one that will stick in her memory.
“I thought the Steel game was a really courageous win. We’d had so much travelling leading into that game and then to be down for most of the match and come back and pull it out at the end – it was a big game,” Fitzgerald said.
The NSW Swifts welcomed two new additions to the lineup in 2011; shooter Carla Dziwoki and defender Mo’onia Gerrard. Both players added to the depth of the team, providing genuine options and creating an impact when they stepped on court.
The steady improvement of young shooter and 2010 Australian Netball League Player of the Year Amorette Wild also impressed Fitzgerald.
“Amorette has been a steady improver over the last few years and she’s never let us down. We’ve brought her in in pressure situations and particularly in that semi-final I thought her performance was awesome and I was really happy for her,” she said.
Fitzgerald believes the team was mentally tougher than in previous seasons but that their consistency let them down.
“When we were good we were very good but there were too many patches when we were inconsistent and let the opposition back into games that we should have won well,” Fitzgerald said.
Never before has the race to the ANZ Championship Finals been as close as it was this year. Fans were kept waiting until the final round for the finals puzzle to take shape. But it is this level of competition that Fitzgerald believes is healthy for the game.
“You look at it year-in-year-out and it just gets a little bit better all the time. This year the level of competition at the top was a lot stronger than it has ever been before. We truly had four teams in the Finals that could win the title so the standard is just getting better every year.”
Final Placings:
1 Queensland Firebirds
2 Northern Mystics
3 Waikato/BOP Magic
4 NSW Swifts
5 Melbourne Vixens
6 Adelaide Thunderbirds
7 Southern Steel
8 Central Pulse
9 West Coast Fever
10 Canterbury Tactix
2011 NSW Swifts
Catherine Cox (Captain), Ashleigh Brazill, Rebecca Bulley, Carla Dziwoki, Mo’onia Gerrard, Kimberlee Green (Co-Vice Captain), Sonia Mkoloma, Susan Pratley, Kimberley Smith (Co-Vice Captain), Courtney Tairi, Vanessa Ware, Amorette Wild.
Julie Fitzgerald – Coach
Rob Wright – Assistant Coach
Angela Kerr – Manager
Sean Mungovan – Physiotherapist
Paula Peralta – Physiotherapist
Bryce Cavanagh – Strength and Conditioning
