The second half of the 2025 Suncorp Super Netball regular season may not have gone as smoothly as Briony Akle would have liked, but with a top-two finish secured the head coach is looking forward to reflecting and resetting ahead of the Finals Series.
With three Grand Finals and two Premierships under her belt as Swifts head coach already (in addition to two as a Swifts player), Akle knows a thing or two about Finals netty. However, there are few challenges bigger in the game than a trip to Perth to face the West Coast Fever in front of a partisan local crowd.
That’s what faces the Swifts on Sunday in their bid to go directly to the 2025 Grand Final. But, come Finals time, the season starts all over again.
“Look I think there are three parts to the season,” Akle told Matty White on SEN 1170 on Wednesday.
“You have the pre-season, then the regular rounds and then the Finals if you are good enough to make them.
“If you look at the last month, we have not played our best netball and for our group it’s about putting the rounds to bed and thinking ‘right… refocus, it’s Round 1 again and what are we going to do differently in these moments?’”
The Swifts had wonderful Finals preparation against the Queensland Firebirds last Sunday when they were taken into extra time by their old rivals.
With the game on the line, Akle reminded her team (who finished regular season 10-4) that this was the exact type of situation they thrived in and reminded them of why they loved to play.
“We had a theme this year that we wanted every team to be at their best when they played us and we had to embrace the pressure and walk towards that.
“Under the heat of the battle often your vision gets narrow and you make poor decisions because you’re scared of the clock or the score, but I knew that we’d done the hard work with scenarios in training and I had to let my players know that I believed in them.
“Often, it’s the little moments earlier in games where things can go wrong for us and that’s when we don’t walk towards the pressure.
“I was proud that we pushed through (against the Firebirds). We should probably never have let it get to that extra time period, but when we needed to, we stepped up.”
While the Swifts missed out on the Minor Premiership this year, it’s worth nothing that they didn’t finish top of the pile when they claimed their most recent titles in 2019 and 2021.
Akle has reflected this week and is keen not to overload her players heading into the business end of the year.
“I’ve thought about what clarity I need to prepare for Finals and what I learned is that you need to be really specific in what you’re saying to your players.
“I’ve only got two hours left with them (on court) before our game on Sunday so I focus on two or three basic things that we need to nail and not overcomplicate things. Any athlete will appreciate that.
“Against the Fever on Sunday it’s about keeping our centre passes and keeping in the one-point game. They don’t turn the ball over or throw it away so we need to stay with them and then it will come down to two-point strategy and ensuring we rebound any shots that we miss because they will punish you on transition.”
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