Lightning see off Leeds Met

Loughborough Lightning were given a hard work out by a determined Leeds Met Carnegie side in the Netball Superleague, before triumphing 57-37.

Bottom of the table at the start of play, Leeds Met started brightly, with Lianne Badmin and Alex Kirk combining well in the shooting circle. However, for the home side, Welsh international Becky James soon found her range, and scored 17/18 in the first period. Lightning settled well and played fluently after the initial exchanges moving in to a 18-8 lead by quarter time.

In the second quarter James moved to GA and Loughborough introduced former England international Heather Clarke at GS for her first game of the season. The change did nothing to disrupt Loughborough's rhythm, with WA Olivia Murphy and C Jade Clarke finding their shooters in good scoring positions with relative ease. However, Leeds were still determined to take the fight to their highly ranked opponents, and with Barlett, Gayle and Lancashire contesting every centre court ball, the bottom side only lost the quarter 8-14. (HT:32-16)

Leeds rang the changes in the third period, introducing Donna Spikings at GA and Sarah Jones at C, hoping that the fresh legs might bring them in to contention. Lightning also made changes to their attacking line up by introducing Natasha Hampshire at WA and bringing Stephenson back on at GA. Lightning didn’t quite hit the court with the same intensity in this quarter and the game became littered with errors for both sides. The quarter score was 14-9 in Lightning’s favour but more clinical finishing would have seen bigger margin for the home team.

In the final quarter Lightning used the 21 goal cushion as an opportunity to rotate the squad. This saw further disruption to Lightning’s pattern of play but a lot of young players got much needed court time. Leeds reaped the benefits from the Lightning changes and mounted a fierce battle for the last quarter honours. The visitors took the period 11-10 to take some consolation from the game but Lightning still ended with an impressive 57-37 win.