Celtic Dragons Aiming For Big Cardiff Finish Against Wasps

Celtic Dragons sign off at their Cardiff venue for the 2017 Vitality Superleague Netball Season this weekend.

They play second-placed Wasps at the Sport Wales National Centre on Saturday (4pm) when with teams will be hungry for success.

Dragons are preparing for a capacity attendance and their Green Army fans will again fire up the atmosphere in the main hall.

Visitors Wasps are looking to confirm their final four play-off spot with a win, while Dragons have shown time and again they can compete hard and fast with the top teams.

Head coach Trish Wilcox and her players are determined to finish their season on a high in home matches against Wasps this weekend and then Team Northumbria, a match being played at Ebbw Vale Sports Centre a week later.

Wasps secured a resounding 62-40 victory over Dragons at the Ricoh Arena and how the Welsh club would love to earn revenge in this return fixture.

Dragons are bottom of the Vitality Netball Superleague, having secured only one win all season – against Sirens in April – while Wasps are chasing success.

Their Director of Netball Tamsin Greenway has stressed that these are the games her team needs to win if they want to be challenging at final four weekend.

“We need to beat the teams at the bottom,” said Greenway. “If you want to be a contender these are the games you have to win.

“I hope that we go to Cardiff and put a solid performance in and prove what we are capable of, because if we don’t go there and play well we don’t deserve that place in the final four.

“I will be looking for more from my key players, my leaders out there on court.

“They have got to switch on when we feed information into them, make those changes out on the court and drive us forward when things aren’t quite clicking for us in games.

“We struggled to adapt in the game on Monday against Surrey Storm, but we did it well against Loughborough Lightning and Manchester Thunder. We know we are capable of switching things up when we have to.”

Wasps Netball are currently second in the Superleague, level on points with Manchester Thunder in third position.

Team Bath and Surrey Storm could still reach Wasps’ points total, but the team’s superior goal difference means it is very unlikely they will drop out of the top four positions.

“We will have to have a really bad couple of games to not make the top four now,” says Greenway.

Captain Suzy Drane and her team will be out to ensure Wasps have a difficult time as they aim to qualify for the finals.

Vitality Superleague fixtures this weekend:

Friday: 7.30 Severn Stars v Hertfordshire Mavericks.

Saturday: 4pm Celtic Dragons v Wasps; 6pm Loughborough Lightning v Team Northumbria; 7pm Surrey Storm v Sirens.

Monday: 7.30pm Manchester Thunder v Team Bath.

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