Travelling to Sydney this weekend, Sunshine Coast Lightning will play the GIANTS to wrap up their 2022 season.
It’s no surprise 2022 has been a challenging season for the players and coaching staff, but this game is an important one — it’s a chance for redemption.
Lightning Head Coach, Kylee Byrne noted the round 7 clash against the GIANTS was a turning point for the team.
“We’re going into this game with a sense of redemption which we’ll use as motivation. The previous match against GIANTS was a big game for us. Cara Koenen was out with COVID and so she just can’t wait for the challenge against Tilly McDonell and April Brandley,” she said.
“We’re still using words like pride — we don’t want to finish where we are, and we know we can disrupt teams above us. In the end we just want to do it for each other, and we know we’re better than where we’re at right now, and to be able to finish on a fantastic performance is what we’re after.”
In order to get redemption against the home side, Lightning will need to implement some strategies to slow down GIANTS’ ability to apply pressure in the last five minutes of each quarter.
“The first thing is to make sure in the first 10 minutes we’ve done the job and we’re ahead on the scoreboard. We know the last five minutes of each quarter is a massive strength of theirs, and we’ve changed up our defensive style slightly to disrupt those last five minutes for them,” Kylee said.
Lightning player Tara Hinchcliffe commented on the significance of winning the last game of the season.
“Everyone’s really excited. Obviously it hasn’t been the season we wanted but we’ve still got an opportunity to finish on a high. And I think you’re only as good as your last game so if we finish this game well, next season’s going to be a cracker,” she said.
