Off-colour Nerine miss their coach

ST CLEMENT'S shone in the sunlight at Beau Sejour yesterday as they were crowned Channel Islands club champions. The Jersey league winners secured a surprisingly comfortable 15-goal victory over their Guernsey counterparts, Nerine Trust, on what was an extremely disappointing day for the home sides.

Earlier, Convent E had cruised past Sarnians Three 62-19 in the Division Three winners clash while Convent C overcame Sarnians Two 48-33 in the meeting of the respective Division Two champions.

But it was the showpiece event that just did not live up to expectations.

Nerine went into the match without their Guernsey goal-attack, Sonia Grant-Yendell, who was bound to be a big loss.

Claire Queripel was also unavailable but being at university has meant she has hardly played a Guernsey league match all season anyway.

Perhaps crucially, they were also missing their coach Gill Queripel, who was away for other netballing reasons and that seemed to have a big effect on the team as the match wore on.

The first quarter was very even with Kerrie Hussey once again using her height to good effect to collect both passes and rebounds although Nerine's court play was not up to its usual high standards.

Saints looked the more cohesive outfit and worked well for each other to provide chances for star goal shooter Zoe Hotton.

After going into an early lead, Nerine soon found themselves pegged back and three goals late on in the opening 15 minutes gave Saints a 11-8 lead going into the second quarter.

This was when the game slipped away from the home side.

Carol McKeon had the better of the battle of the centres, while Jenna Bushell was quietly effective as wing-attack as the visitors put Nerine under a lot of pressure.

From a 14-11 advantage just a couple of minutes into the quarter, St Clement's allowed Nerine just two goals in a 12-minute period as they raced into a 25-13 half-time lead.

Nerine duly made some changes with Nena Bourgaize being brought to centre from wing-attack, Tanya Gibson moving from wing-defence to goal-attack and Heather Niles and Juliet Godwin being introduced to the action.

The home side responded well and they improved their link up play to take the quarter 12-10, but a 10-goal deficit always looked too great to make up in the final 15.

As so it proved with Saints moving up a couple of gears to coast it 49-34.

'We struggled to get it in the circle in the first half and we just didn't seem to want it like they did. It just did not flow for us today,' said Nerine captain Lorna Brown.