Northumbria 48-57 Loughborough Lightening
Loughborough Lightening made it two wins in a row as they silenced Team Northumbria 57-48 at Sport Central in Newcastle on Monday night
Lightning followed their first win in 20 months against the Celtic Dragons last week with a convincing away win to climb above their opponents into fifth position.
Both teams had traded goal for goal in a tight opening quarter, but it was Northumbria who took a slender 14-13 lead.
Ugandan ace, Peace Proscovia and Maryka Holtzhausen helped Lightning edge ahead as they kept up their remarkable 100 per cent shooting accuracy throughout the second quarter.
That was until Lisa Bowman stayed calm under pressure to level things up at 26-26 on the stroke of half-time to the delight of Northumbria head coach Lisa Stanley-Craig.
Proscovia was proving quite an obstacle in attack and scoring at will as she inspired Lightning to a 43-37 lead to dampen the enthusiastic crowd inside Sport Central.
“I’m just so excited. I love netball. I have to thank Loughborough for giving me this opportunity to expose my talent which was hidden away in Uganda.” Peace is quoted by Sky Sports.
For the second time in a row, Peace scooped the player of the match award after her maintaining her 100 per cent scoring rate with 41 from 41 attempts in the circle and she told Sky Sports.
“Karen (Atkinson) is a very good coach. What I’m doing and what the rest of the players are doing is all down to the impetus of Karen.”
Lightning head coach Atkinson admitted: “It don’t think it was the prettiest game of netball, but it was really good to come out with a win.” Following their 58-44 home victory over Dragon Celtics last week, now Loughborough Lightening has won and lost 2 games apiece.
They lost their first two games. 70-44 away loss at Yorkshire Jets and the shocking 48-40 defeat at the hands of Hertfordshire Mavericks.
Lightening play Surrey Storm next Saturday at home.
