By Adrian Warren
July 11th 2009 @ 2:27am
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Home advantage for Aussie teams in ANZ semi-finals
Minor premiers Melbourne Vixens will set out to starve prolific Magic shooter Irene van Dyk of the ball in Sunday’s trans-Tasman netball competition major semi-final.
Australian teams will enjoy home advantage in both semi-finals, with the Vixens hosting the Magic at Melbourne’s Hisense Arena and Adelaide playing Southern Steel at ETSA Park on Monday night.
The Magic and Steel defeated the Vixens and Thunderbirds respectively in their regular season games in New Zealand.
The Waikato-Bay of Plenty franchise are the only team to have beaten the Vixens, defeating the Melbourne side 55-48 in their round 10 clash in Tauranga.
“We learnt quite a few lessons,” Vixens coach Julie Hoornweg said of her team’s loss.
She said she had watched tape of the Magic’s two losses to Adelaide and Queensland.
Asked if there was a common denominator, Hoornweg said: “You have to shut down the ball early long before it gets to Irene (van Dyk) so we will be doing that.”
“We’ve got (midcourters) Renae Hallinan and Natasha Chokljat both playing quality netball at the moment, so we will be looking to shut the ball down much earlier.”
Magic coach Noeline Taurua said she placed little importance on her team’s victory over the Vixens as she felt Melbourne had lifted since then.
Melbourne head into the game full of confidence having scored a record 80-39 win over the Pulse last week.
“They’ve had that recent experience of the New Zealand style and we can assume they will be confident,” Taurua told NZPA.
Adelaide is intent on producing a much-improved defensive performance in an attempt to reverse their 58-49 loss to the Steel in Dunedin less than two weeks ago.
It was the highest score Adelaide have conceded in this year’s competition.
“Defensively we weren’t in it, we were in chase mode the whole time and our discipline was a little bit lax,” Adelaide coach Jane Woodlands-Thompson said.
She said the Thunderbirds had tried to address the Steel’s policy of playing with an open circle since they had added Australian shooter Megan Dehn to their rotation in the closing weeks of the regular season.
Steel coach Robyn Broughton was treating Monday’s clash as a totally different experience from their regular season triumph over the Thunderbirds.
“Their speed is ferocious, so you need to make sure that you can stifle that a bit,” Broughton said.
She said the addition of Dehn had given the Steel different options and the Australian clicking with Silver Ferns shooter Donna Wilkins had been a “huge” thing for the Steel.
“Megan has got a great netball brain and she’s a really good team person and (she’s got) all those things I value.”
The Steel have not won in Australia, but Broughton said it was something she would never mention to her players.
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