2024 ANZ Premiership Round 15 Preview
Take a look at the three match-ups coming in Round 15 of the 2024 ANZ Premiership.
4pm, Saturday 20 July
Steel v Magic at ILT Stadium Southland in Invercargill
It all comes down to this - the last round of the regular season where hosting rights for the ANZ Premiership Grand Final will be determined and the third spot in the Finals Series will also be cemented. The AVIS Magic need victory in the Deep South if they are to extend their season and they will also be reliant on the Stars to pull off a major upset in Auckland on Sunday.
On form, the Magic should have little trouble dispatching the Ascot Park Hotel Southern Steel but there are a couple of key factors which could cause the form books to be rewritten. The game is being played in the fortress that is ILT Stadium and it will also be the swansong for coach Reinga Bloxham who has announced that this season will be her last in charge of the Steel.
The Magic have had the better of the Steel each time they have met – winning by nine in Round 5 and seven in Round 10. They outplayed the Tactix last week led by the performance of captain Ameliaranne Ekenasio who shot at range with 95 per cent accuracy.
She said the team would need to play with the same “heart” they did against the Tactix and do as much as they could to control their future. She felt the Magic did a great job at controlling the tempo in the win over the Tactix and they would be looking for a similar approach in their build up to the last round.
“We did really well at staying really composed – we felt really calm the majority of the time. This is a big one for us - obviously we want to play with heaps of heart and being in control of our future as much as possible and seeing how it plays out.”
4pm, Sunday 21 July
Stars v Mystics at Pulman Arena in Auckland
The Stars have been vocal about being a possible disrupter to the Premiership proceedings, but will they be able to walk the talk when they host the MG Mystics at Pulman Arena. They come in off the back of just their second win of the season and will need to produce something special to disrupt the Grace Nweke-Peta Toeava connection that has been re-established at the business end of the season.
Captain Maia Wilson praised her team’s resilience and composure in the one-goal win over the Steel and acknowledged the efforts of their whole defensive unit. Being able to back it up against a red-hot Mystics side will be tough but Wilson said they had the ability to “make a muck of things” for their neighbours.
“We love our sisters across the bridge but there’s something in there, personally for me, that would be nice to take it away. At the end of the day it’s going to be a great game - our last game of the season and at home. Pulman Arena bring it on.”
The Mystics are back to full strength however and will be a tough prospect with captain Michaela Sokolich-Beatson relieved to have her full team back on the training court and all back in action.
“You build your team around your roster so to have people fall away, it just makes it harder,” she said.
They also changed up their game plan in the convincing win over the Pulse, taking ball to circle edge for their feed into shooter Grace Nweke.
“We know that any team with a tall shooter that we can feed from the circle edge, is kind of like 100 per cent so we wanted to take all the risk out of the game.”
7.30pm, Monday 22 July
Pulse v Tactix at TSB Arena in Wellington
The script couldn’t have been written any better with the league’s two top teams battling it out in the final act of the ANZ Premiership regular season to determine which team will host next month’s Grand Final. They are currently pegged on the same points, but it is the Trident Homes Tactix who are top of the ladder thanks to goal differential over Te Wānanga o Raukawa Pulse.
But both teams are coming into the must-win match on the back of disappointing losses – the Tactix by two goals to the Magic and the Pulse going down by 10 to the Mystics. Tactix captain Kimiora Poi believed her side failed to “absorb the pressure” in the bonus-point loss to the Magic last week and also had other areas to address.
“We like to pride ourselves on getting ball on D (defence) but we’re struggling at the moment in bringing it down to our shooters, which has kind of been the theme for the last couple of weeks, so we need to tidy that up,” she said.
Coach Marianne Delaney-Hoshek has an interesting choice to make in who will bib up for a start in the shooting role with Aliyah Dunn, back from injury, and Ellie Bird pushing for the spot. Pulse captain Kelly Jackson said they struggled to break the Peta Toeava-Grace Nweke connection, but they would “know what we need to do next time”.
Now they were focused on hosting the Tactix with a major bonus of being at home for the first time in a month, having been on the road since Round 11. Jackson said following their defeat they would address the importance of holding onto possession.
“Looking after ball that we get and knowing that when ball is in our hands, we’re in control of it. We’re really excited to be at home.”