WELCOME to After the Fact, a new series here at Rookie Me Central, chatting to key figures in the Suncorp Super Netball post match and get their thoughts on the match that just transpired and the bigger issues in the game.

This week we chatted to West Coast Fever coach Dan Ryan after his side’s heart breaking loss to the Melbourne Vixens on Sunday. 

Unsurprisingly, Ryan was disappointed with how the match had ended for his team. 

“Disappointing result for us. I thought we almost had it, but too be honest I don’t think we were anywhere near our best for the majority of the game today and full credit to the Vixens,” Ryan said. “They came out hard and they set their intentions really early and it always felt like we were chasing just a little bit and not able to find our best performance, so that’s disappointing but we’ll respond next week.”

The Fever opted early to move Kim Jenner into wing defence instead of the usual go to Sunday Aryang, and Ryan noted that was a nice they had also made last week with positive effect. 

“We made that move last week and Kim trains across the transverse line in every single session across both roles and she’s equally capable of playing both and for parts I thought she did a really good job to impact and delay and then Liz Watson just got on top as well and I thought the move to put Sunday back at wing defence late reaped its rewards,” he said. “She put up a great intercept for us to shift momentum.”

“We’ve got some options there and I just felt like we really struggled the entire game to impact defensively. Their centre pass conversion rate was very high, we weren’t able to get defensive rebounds today which hurt us a little bit as well, so we had to keep using our personnel and shift defensive structure to try and make a change, but credit to the Vixens, they always found a way.”

The Fever coach also sung the praises of Sasha Glasgow, who landed a whopping eight successful Super Shots. 

“She played a really smart game. I think she had to work her butt off against Jo Weston like all goal attacks need to against Jo,” Ryan said. “She linked the midcourt nicely and she really attacked the post when she needed to as well, and a pressurised shot in the last few seconds to sink, but just unfortunate how it played out down the other end”.

After a number of away games the Fever now have a run of home games coming up, and Ryan is excited by the prospect of that. 

“I think if we keep it in perspective we’re still in a really good position. We’ve worked hard this first half of the season to put ourselves in this position in the top two, but we understand too the challenges are going to be coming every single week from every single team, so we can’t be resting on our laurels and we need to find those shifts in our performance under real pressure like we experienced today, but our run home is something we really need to maximise the opportunity of,” he said.