NSL Player Focus: Shaquanda Greene-Noel (Celtic Dragons)
IT had been a long time coming, but finally the Celtic Dragons picked up their second win of the 2023 Netball Super League season last weekend with a convincing win over the Strathclyde Sirens.
A big factor in that win was the efforts of Shaquanda Greene-Noel, with the Trinidad and Tobago skipper continuing her excellent form she has shown this season with another stellar performance over the weekend.
This Player Focus seeks to take a closer look at her game on the weekend and at her technique to determine what makes her such a good goal keeper.
Greene-Noel finished with a staggering 14 turnovers to go with nine rebounds, four intercepts and three deflections in the win, and worked in well with Ella Powell-Davies to really make life hard for the Sirens shooters.
Greene-Noel and Powell-Davies worked really well together on Friday night, as they have all season, never getting in each other’s way, and with Powell-Davies finishing with seven turnovers, five intercepts, two deflections and one rebound of her own, it shows that they were a true partnership and one did not solely rely on the other to get the job done. It did help that the Sirens were throwing plenty of ball away at times, but in addition to that Greene-Noel’s timing was also sound to pick up the loose ball.
Greene-Noel is very much a body on body defender, but tends to put the pressure on side on. That is perhaps because it gives her a better angle to capitalise on her long reach to take the intercept.
Taking a further deep dive into her stats from the match and you see that she took another step up in her performance on Friday night compared to earlier matches in this season. She did finish with a team high seven penalties, but that it only half of her season average per game.
She also had only one unforced error and more importantly had zero cautions or warnings, it shows how composed she was with ball in hand and how thorough her thinking was with the decisions she made on court. She was more thorough with her thinking in regards to her timing for the intercepts, which made any contact or obstruction calls less likely to get picked up for intentional.
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