Cape Winelands to take on Nelson Mandela Bay in netball championship final

Cape Winelands will take on surprise packages Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) in the Spar National Championships netball final at Hoërskool DF Malan in Cape Town on Saturday.

Cape Winelands booked their place in the final in a narrow, hard-fought 60-56 win over Johannesburg, who relinquished their lead in the second and third quarters.

In the second semifinal, Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) produced a spirited performance to stun much-fancied Cape Town 47-35 in a match where they led from the beginning to the end.

Cape Winelands captain Nicholé Taljaard said they did not drop their heads when Johannesburg took the lead in the first and second and quarters.

“Yes, there was a little bit of scoreboard pressure on us when they went ahead in the game,” said Taljaard.

“You can look at the score but you must carry on fighting, being there for your teammates and playing the netball that you know. Whether the score is seven behind or seven ahead you still have to keep every single ball safe, play clever netball and try to get the ball in.”

Taljaard gave credit to Winelands' coach Marchelle Maroun.

“We worked as hard as could and the scoreboard did not play too much on our minds. We are a group of amazing players with an amazing coach who was able to pull us together.

“She managed to get the strength out of every single player so that we play for each other and not individually and that helped us get to this point where we are at the moment.

“There is always pressure in the final, all the teams that qualified for the top four wanted to play in the final. We also made mistakes during the week, we had some positive things and we are looking to take the positive things into the final game and play the type of netball that we know.”

Excited NMB vice captain Noluthando Maliehe said they will have a chance of lifting the trophy if they correct some of the mistakes they committed against Cape Town.

“They (Winelands) are a good team but we played against them this week and we know what we need to do against them. The other important thing for us is to fix some of the mistakes from our semifinal against Cape Town — if we do that we should be fine,” Maliehe said.

“The match against Cape Winelands was not easy at all, we knew that they would come tough at us but fortunately we were tougher than them because we wanted to win this game and get to the final.”