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Storm too strong for Dragons

07 May 2011

Tamsin Greenway

Surrey Storm secured their spot in the NSL Playoffs last night with a convincing win over Welsh rivals Celtic Dragons at Surrey Sports Park. In their last home fixture of the season and in front of another sell out crowd, Storm put in a solid, full team performance to cement their place in the finals stage of the competition. With Internationals Tamsin Greenway and Rachel Dunn back in action and the team still reeling from last week’s shock defeat to Team Northumbria, Storm hit to court running and never looked back. Coach Mary Beardwood opted to put Greenway into GA with Dunn in the circle but the pressure was on the Storms defence who were tasked with the job of shutting down Celtics dominant 6ft 6 shooter. Right from the starting whistle the defensive duo of Reid and Holland stamped their mark, both taking a number of impressive intercepts allowing Storm to get an early 2 goal lead which they quickly built on. Celtic often found themselves with nowhere to go and were forced into numerous feeding errors into their shooting circle. Storm looked slick in attack with Cosentino and Trippick combining with their shooters at ease and with a continued supply of ball provided by their defence pulled ahead to an 8 goal lead at the end of the 1st period at 18-10.

There were no changes for Storm going into the 2nd and despite a 5 goal run from Celtic keeping Storm from scoring for 3 minutes, they soon settled back into their stride and the quarter was all theirs. Greenway was slotting consistently from anywhere and Holland and Reid were all over the Celtic shooters. With the away teams error count rising and Storm putting together some moments of brilliance both in attack and defence the lead continued to creep up to double figures. However, the home side were guilty of taking their foot off the pedal at times and the last 3 minutes of the half allowed Celtic to gain some momentum and go into half time off the back of another 3 goal run trailing 35-22. Celtic rang the changes again for the second half with their 3rd defensive combination taking to the court. This period proved to be the scrappiest of the game with some interesting umpiring decisions and Celtic upping their physical presence on court. The Welsh unit started to find some space to thread the ball into their shooter and with both teams converting consistently the score ticked up goal for goal. A final turnover for Celtic allowed them to take the quarter by 1 and go into the final period 47-35 down.


Lucy Adams was introduced for Cosentino at WA for the final 15 minutes injecting some pace into the Storm attack. Celtic again rang the changes and their 6ft 6 shooting machine took to the bench.  Again Storm were guilty at times of cruising through patches of the period and weren’t consistently clinical. However, with a playoff place in their sights and closing in on 60 goals Storm did enough in the final period to close it out and take the game 59-44.

Coach Mary Beardwood said ‘Today was a great performance from the team. Last weeks loss hit the girls hard and re-focussed them which showed today. It was great to have Tamsin and Rach back and defensively we were awesome today. Hannah and Katy were both players of the match and were brilliant. Job done and on to Bath next week.’