NVL Ladies Div 1 – Saturday 17th September
Newcastle Staffs Ladies v Tameside
NSVC Ladies started their division 1 campaign with the difficult task of trying to overcome one of the league favourites – Tameside. It was a greatly changed 1st 6 from the previous season that took to the court, both Paige Nelmes and Meg Viggars having moved onto pastures new in Malory and Pollux (Holland) as they look to progress their international careers. The team was captained by the returning Rosie Mankee after 2 years away and also Hannah Millican making her NVL debut on the bench. From the start it was evident that the Tameside serve would put the Castle reception unit of James, Roberts and Preston under severe pressure. With too many free balls going over the net, Tameside were quick to exert a strong attack with wing hitter Krawczyk particularly dominant. The first set went comfortably to Tameside 25-16.
Despite changes in the Castle line up with Bellamy replacing Mankee as setter and Rogers coming in at off-setter, the pattern of the game in the first set continued into the 2nd with middle hitters Gurgul and Stewart frozen out with the first pass falling short of the 3m line. Despite Castle battling on, Tameside held firm to take the 2nd set 25-17.
NSVC began the 3rd set more determined with Chadwick, Preston and James all beginning to hit winners and Castle finally started to exert some pressure on the Tameside defence. As expected Tameside came back strongly with Krawczyk again causing the Castle right sided defence all sorts of problems. At 21-17 up, a back court substitution that had worked well previously for NSVC seemed to upset the reception unit significantly, this was all the opportunity Tameside needed as swooped to take the set and match 25-22.
Castle must take heart that their young side did manage to give their opponents a reasonable game but must go away and work hard on several aspects of their game. With Charlotte James now departing to Cardiff University, the team will hope to add a few more signings to their squad as they look to build on this performance in the coming weeks.
MVP - Rosie Mankee.
16-25, 17-25, 22-25
