Thistles Spar Diamond Challenge starts

Scottish Thistles stepped out today against South Africa in the first test match of the series.

The SPAR Proteas got off to a winning start with a 61-42 victory over the Scottish Thistles but head coach Tamsin Greenway says she is pleased with her team’s performance;

“We have different aspects of each of the games that we’re taking on. Today was about challenging South Africa and I think we did that.”

“Although losing is frustrating it wasn’t about that for us today, it was about could we win more balls over on them. and we did that today.

Could we bring our new shooters into the game, the impact of Cerys Cairns coming in there and shooting 10 from 10. So, we’ve done some really smart stuff today and we kept the scoreboard ticking over, which is good, and we’ve set ourselves a really good starting point for the rest of this competition.”

 Captain Claire Maxwell said it had been a very good experience for a young team.

“Many of us are not used to traveling and South Africa has far more international caps than we have. I’m really proud of the girls and our performance today, we went through a rollercoaster a couple of times within that game, but we pulled ourselves back out and we won that final quarter and that was really pleasing.”

 “It’s an intense game, South Africa play, a huge amount of speed and they’re big in terms of their defensive unit. So, for us, that’s great exposure and we’re really looking forward to taking everything we’ve learnt into Zimbabwe.

“We ticked a number of boxes in that match. Now I want us to be able to compete for longer periods of time.”

 Scottish Thistles fixtures are available to stream live via Recast https://share.recast.tv/u/GyY0m?referrer=Bq9ZY

FRIDAY 25TH NOVEMBER
10:00AM UK Time // SCOTLAND VS ZIMBABWE

SATURDAY 26TH NOVEMBER
POS 1 VS POS 2// 12:00PM UK Time // POS 3 VS PRESIDENTS XII 2:00PM //

PIC : Reg Caldecott