Hi all,

Yesterday, we played another round of the Wellington League.

The first Vikings team competing were the Vikings men playing the Spartanz team at 3:30pm.
The coach instructed the team with a few focus points going into the game and you could see from the first minute that the team was very willingness to execute. We started quickly building a lead (3:0, 6:2, 18:3) and our defense was very organised and destructive to the offensive efforts of the Spartanz team. In all fairness the Spartanz were missing two of their most experienced players and they really struggled creating scoring opportunities without those. With a 24:6 both teams went into the Halftime break. The second half was not much different from the first one, the Vikings showcased a strong defensive performance followed by good team play in attack. constantly extending their lead (29:10, 36:13, 40:14) up to an end result of 45:15.
In the past few years the Vikings had showed always issues, when being seen as the clear favorite but were often struggling to ensure the scoreboard mirrors that. In this 2015 season we have now shown more than ones, that we actually can execute our game plans better and with more focus and therefore dominate games. This is very encouraging moving forward, especially with all these young players representing the core of the team.
On an additional note, the Vikings welcomed a new player who had a great debut today – WELCOME Ben.
Vikings men: Petr; Todd 10, Daniel 7/3, Luke 5, Nico 4, Emmanuel 4, Ben 4, Sam K 3/1, Jack 3, Pierre 3, Fred 2

The Vikings women team then faced at 6:30pm the Vic Uni team and we were almost able to field the whole squad as only two players weren’t able to come.
The started really well and went to challenge the Vic Uni team for most of the game. The score went neck on neck for the majority of the first half (3:4, 5:5, 7:7) until Vic Uni started just before the half time break to establish a minor lead (8:11). The Vikings women team played actually great Handball in this first half, creating lots of scoring opportunities from very good defense as well as good team game in attack. Unfortunately were struggling to convert these into goals and that followed us through to the second half and got even worse (9:15, 10:20) and resulted in a 14:24 loss for our team. At the end we were clearly creating more good chances and also were playing better as team, but our struggles with converting our chances and some missing intensity in attack against their two (only) scoring threads were leading to a loss and a score that doesn’t actually reflect the good game the team has shown. Another good outcome was that every field player was able to score today, which just shows further our positive development as team.
Vikings women: Maddie; Laura 4, Fran 3, Alex 2, Bridget 2, Lizzie 1, Maddy 1, Ellie 1

Next week games are on Sunday (26/7/2015) at:
Women – 5:00pm – vs Spartanz HC
Men – 8:00pm – vs Vic Uni HC