Lightning Rue Missed Chances

Loughborough Lightning 36 - 38 Team Northumbria

On Saturday Loughborough hosted a strengthened Team Northumbria side in their first home game of their Cooperative Superleague season, taking place at Loughborough University’s Sire David Wallace Sports Hall. With 3 players away at the World Championships until January Lightning are working on building new partnerships throughout the court.

Loughborough Lightning started the game well showing quick hands and fast effective moves. Alex Astle at GS held the Team Northumbria GK well and played a strong game with Hannah Reid closing down Team Northumbria’s GS at the opposite end Loughborough were firmly in the game. At the end of the first quarter Lightning were just 1 goal down at 11-10

The second quarter saw Team Northumbria using a long ball across the centre third to good advantage and combined this with some aggressive defending by the centre court players. Lightning failed to penetrate on attack and by half time were down by three, 21-18.

Changes at half time saw Loughborough Student Lauren Doyle come in to GA replacing Lisa Stephenson and Natasha Hampshire moving to WA with Olivia Murphy taking her centre court place. The changes worked extremely well with the new shooting partnership shooting accurately and some exciting play throughout the court. Lightning’s defence tied up Team Northumbria’s shooters and Lightning’s new attack helped tie the score at 31-31 by the end of the quarter.

For the final quarter Northumbria switched their shooters with a very effective result, rewarding them with more shooting opportunities. Lightning appeared to get pinned in the attacking third with Team Northumbria closing them down. On their few shooting opportunities Lightning failed to capitalise, allowing Team Northumbria to take the game by 2 goals, Final Score 38-36