Netball: Dumbarton Harp salvage a point

Nov 14 2008 by Laura McLachlan, Lennox Herald (main ed)

DUMBARTON Harp netball team battled hard to salvage a point on Saturday – but just couldn’t find enough goals to do it.

The girls were confident ahead of the match after their surprise win the week before, and it seemed to be headed the same way after Harp staged a comeback.

However, it wasn’t to be as the University side overpowered the Dumbarton girls in the final quarter.

In the second quarter Harp were down by a couple of goals but still felt confident a win was possible. The team were all determined to try and close the gap.

Their luck did improve and a flurry of goals from the Dumbarton girls helped to narrow the margin. It was hard to pick out any standout players in this particular match as everyone did their best and adapted to the defensive strategy of this match well.

Play in the centre of the court was good overall and the attack worked hard to turn as many rebounds into goals as they could. Unfortunately, as well as trouble in the shooting circle, Harps defence were finding it hard to collect rebounds at their end, which was unusual as that is usually one of their biggest strengths.

Harp went into the last quarter five goals behind but managed to pull this back to only two and allowed themselves to think the match would be a repeat of last week and that they would take a win in the last quarter after all.

However this was not to be. Strathclyde buckled down, kept their heads in the game and managed pull away from Harp yet again to take the victory.

Dumbarton Harp: M Cleary, L Cleary, A Murray, N Devine, M Hegarty, A Gillies, P McNab, L King