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.

In today’s inaugural edition, we chatted to Melbourne Vixens defender Jo Weston after she helped her Vixens to an almighty come from behind win over the Queensland Firebirds.

Weston described the game she had just played in as “pretty exciting actually.”

“The first quarter I thought was pretty competitive and we had that edge going into the quarter time break and that second quarter was pretty average from us,” she said. “It was obviously very good from the Firebirds, their defensive pressure was pretty impeccable but we just weren’t able to rip the ball in or create turnovers in the defensive end.”

“So luckily we had a little bit of a regroup at half time and managed to come out firing in the second half, but we are still looking for consistency over four quarters, so hopefully we have that next week.”

As exciting as she found the game, Weston was not quite sure what it was in the third term that helped the Vixens turn proceedings around.

“I don’t really know. I think every team’s always looking at conversion rates off centre pass so that’s something that probably just increased, just probably generally,” she said. “I think we only scored 10 goals in the second quarter so that’s not up to SSN standards, you’re not going to win a game scoring that few goals in a quarter. It’s hard to put it down to one thing, I don’t know”.

In a rare occurrence and after teammate Kate Eddy was a late withdrawal, Weston started the game in wing defence as opposed to her usual goal defence, but she did not mind.

“It’s pretty fun actually,” she said.

“I do play it a little bit at training, but when it comes to a game sometimes it’s a little bit of a shock to the system, but no it was really great to be out there and to be able to work on the line with Kate [Moloney] in centre. So we’ve played that way a little bit at Diamonds before but not that much at Vixens so that was really fun and got moved to goal defence, a little bit of extra running, little bit of extra jumping, so got the best of both worlds today.”

Speaking of the Diamonds, it had been a big few days for Weston after being announced in the Diamonds’ squad only about 48 hours earlier, but she said she was honoured to be named in the squad again.

“It’s always a bit nerve wracking when you get the phone call from Stacey Marinkovich, but I’m always very honoured to be reselected into the Australian squad so it’s pretty competitive,” she said. “I think it’s one of the most competitive sporting teams in Australia, so any time that happens it’s really special, and especially in a World Cup year making the squads is a step to being selected in the final team, so I think all of us are just excited to be a part of it.”

Since Saturday night’s game was the halfway mark of the season for the Vixens, Weston reflected on how the first half of the year had gone for her side, and described the season thus far as “it’s probably been a little bit up and down I guess.”

“We started quite strongly even though we lost by one goal to the Fever and since then we’ve sort of been winning games but probably maybe not convincingly and even today, it was a convincing win in the end but a little bit up and down throughout the game,” she said. “So I think we’ve trialling different things in defence and attack, just trying to get that formula right so when it comes to the end of the season and finals we’re peaking at the right time.”

Next week Weston’s Vixens have one of the toughest assignments in Australian netball, tackling the red hot West Coast Fever. Weston certainly knows what is in store for her and her teammates next weekend

“What am I expecting? Probably Jhaniele [Fowler] to shoot a lot of goals” she said with a giggle.

“They’re a pretty formidable outfit all over the court now, and they’ve come off a loss to the Thunderbirds and who knows what’s going to happen this weekend for them, so you always really expect a tough battle against them, and I think we learned a lot when we came up against them in Round 1 but a lot of time has passed since then. So we’ll go back and do some homework I think, and then come back out here John Cain Arena on Sunday and deliver the goods.”