The Gauteng Jaguars will head into Saturday’s playoff stage of the Brutal Fruit Netball Premier League as the only unbeaten team.

That’s after a resounding win over the KwaZulu-Natal Kingdom Stars at the University of Pretoria’s Rembrandt Hall this past weekend. The defending champions looked entirely untroubled as they cruised to the 76-23 victory.

It was almost two minutes into the match before the first goal was scored – and that first one belonged to the Stars. But that was the last time they were in the lead, as the Jaguars soon asserted their dominance and had opened up a 17-4 lead by the end of the first quarter.

With the Stars only managing two goals in the second period, that margin was extended even further with the teams reaching half time on 38-6. Apart from the obvious height advantage the Jaguars enjoyed on court, they were also simply far quicker and more accurate than their KZN opponents, and that made all the difference.

“We’re very happy and very proud of the girls for pulling it through and making it to the end of the pool matches unbeaten. It wasn’t specifically a goal we set before the tournament. We just wanted them to play good netball,” said Jaguars assistant coach Rozanne Matthyse afterwards.

Matthyse, whose team have booked an automatic spot in the semi-finals after topping the log, explained that in order to prepare for next weekend’s back-to-back playoff matches, the team had played a tough game in training on Thursday.

“We are obviously focusing on next weekend and making sure that the girls follow a strategy for those games so that’s what we were testing and it paid off. From the beginning we had a common team goal and we knew we were going to work very hard to achieve that goal, which is to be excellent and brilliant in everything we do,” she concluded.

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