Brazill hoping for Super Netball title as Magpies make their push

What may seem like a stretch sounds to Ash Brazill more like a possibility. Her belief that the Magpies have just played like a team for the first time this season is cause for the midcourter’s renewed optimism about a maiden Super Netball title.

Finals needed to be booked first, though, with fifth-placed Collingwood one point behind the Giants with two rounds remaining, and a testing draw against the ladder-leading Swifts in Launceston, followed by the Melbourne Vixens, who are third.

Magpie Ash Brazill (left) in action against West Coast Fever.Credit:AAP

In contrast, the Giants play bottom-three duo the Adelaide Thunderbirds (away) and West Coast Fever (home).

Yet Brazill is heartened by what she was part of against her old team the Fever in Perth on Monday night, and believes the Pies’ overdue victory interstate could be a turning point in an up-and-down season.

“We haven’t really been consistent at all,’’ says Brazill, whose team is yet to win consecutive matches.

“We’ve had really good games where we’ve won by crazy numbers, and then other games where we’ve lost by ridiculous amounts as well, so it’s been a weird year, but the fact that we’re still in it has been really good.

“That was probably the best we’ve played, and it’s now trying to find the consistency in that, and if we keep playing like that and getting better, I reckon we’re a chance to go all the way.

“But it’s how long can we hold onto that? And is that us, or is that a glimpse of what is yet to come?’’

We shall see over the next fortnight, and it may be significant that Brazill considers the Silverdome environment to be a more enthusiastic venue than Melbourne Arena – where a Victorian audience accustomed to supporting the establishment Vixens is still learning to embrace a second team. And one wearing black and white stripes.

“Our new girls haven’t played there yet, but us older girls who have been there the past two years, we prefer playing in Tassie,’’ said Brazill, the Super Netball star and AFLW All-Australian of the annual “home” fixture in Launceston.

“The crowd is just another level, which has been great. We’ve had sellouts when we’ve been down there and they just go crazy.

“We would love to somehow bring them over to Melbourne, but obviously we can’t.

“When you’ve got the Vixens as well over here, you’re fighting for fans, and I guess people love to hate Collingwood, even though … we’re still just a netball club. So we’re trying to change that, but, because I love footy, I get the reason behind it. It’s a weird one, but for some reason people don’t hate us over there in Tassie, so it’s great.’’

Brazill, certainly, is one of netball’s more dynamic and popular athletes, and recently revealed that her wife Brooke is expecting the couple’s first child.

The pregnancy has given the 29-year-old a new focus away from sport, although she brought a footy flavour to Perth Arena while playing a rare full game at centre.

“I felt like I was playing footy on a netball court. I don’t even think I did a dodge, I was just running the whole game, so that was funny. I really enjoyed it,’’ laughs Brazill, who swapped starting bibs with Kim Ravaillion for the second week in three but, this time, stayed there, and finished her 102nd league game as MVP.

“You don’t really put that much pressure on yourself because you haven’t done it for so long. I’m definitely a wing defence and if I can help in that centre role then it’s good, but I don’t know if that will happen this week or not.’’

After just three nights in their own beds, with laundry and a condensed recovery-focused preparation done, the Pies headed south on Friday.

The Diamond-studded dream team, as it was called, played its only final in the inaugural Super Netball season, and finished second bottom in 2018.

But Brazill believes external expectations were unreasonably high, and left players burdened by what became self-imposed pressures and unrelenting judgements that they have failed.

The reality, according to Brazill, is that the Pies are not, in fact, “a superstar team”, and cites as evidence the fact that only three of the 10, Geva Mentor, Kelsey Browne and April Brandley, were at the World Cup (although Shimona Nelson would have represented Jamaica had injury permitted).

Thus Collingwood is not failing, but building, according to Brazill. Towards fourth place, for now, and potentially beyond.

Source: Read Full Article