Monday 1 April 2019 22:42, UK
Manchester Thunder returned to the top of Vitality Netball Superleague with a 62-36 win over Strathclyde Sirens, while Team Bath secured their sixth victory in a row.
In Glasgow, Karen Greig's side dominated on the scoreboard from start to finish and used all 12 of their players during the course of their 60-minute outing.
Meanwhile at Sports Park Arena in Surrey, Anna Stembridge's Team Bath had to navigate their way past considerable Surrey Storm comebacks in order to prevail.
The results mean that Thunder now stand alone at the top of the table on 30 points with Wasps Netball, Team Bath and Loughborough Lightning following on 27 points.
Saracens Mavericks, due to their Round 12 loss at the hands of Lightning, now find themselves in fifth position on 24 points and after Mavs there's a 12-point gap down to sixth.
The other outcome of Monday night's results is that three more teams have now qualified for the British Fast5 All-Stars Championship on Saturday, October 12 at Copper Box Arena.
Thunder, Lightning and Team Bath have all booked their places alongside the defending champions Wasps.
At the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, Manchester Thunder started at a pace and opened up a quick 5-1 lead as their swift movement going forwards combined with clinical turnovers from their defensive end.
Sirens' shooters did not click on their shots and a 58 per cent conversion to goal told their early story. In contrast, Thunder were working at 94 per cent as the quarter came to a close. The result was a 19-10 advantage at the first pause to the visitors.
Thunder's hold on the encounter stayed throughout the half, they extended out to a 15-goal lead and enjoyed a 33-18 cushion at the interval.
In front of their ardent home crowd, Sirens never ceased with their endeavour and looked to claw goals back whenever they could. However, poor basic errors and missed shots derailed them with their head coach Gail Parata saying after that they made a "classy" side look even better.
As the final quarters played out her counterpart, Greig, took the opportunity to make full use of her bench, including handing out a Superleague debut to Ally Thomas at GA.
Despite a 26-goal victory the post-match thoughts of the Vitality Player of the Match - Leota - showed just how focused Thunder are.
"To be honest I thought that it was a poor performance," Leota said. "For me personally I was patchy and I threw away a lot of ball."
"I think that we're going into the business end so I have to put forward a good performance and consistent for the whole 60 minutes.
"It was good to see that we scored more in that second half but I think that we should have gone for a little bit more going forwards. When you want to be the best and you want to win, that's what you've got to do [be tough on yourselves]."
In Surrey, despite Team Bath's strong start to the match, they found themselves locked at 24-24 with hosts Storm after 30 minutes.
The visitors then made a considerable charge to put the game to bed by scoring eight unanswered goals and moving 32-24 in front.
Indeed, Team Bath remained seven ahead at three-quarter time before they were put under further pressure in the final 15.
Rhea Dixon's move to GA reinvigorated Storm and sparked their charge to make it a five-goal match with a little less than ten minutes to play.
However Bath remained focused and wrestled back a commanding hold on the board in order to see out their sixth win on the bounce.
Watch more Vitality Netball Superleague as Loughborough Lightning host Surrey Storm live on Sky Sports Mix on Monday, April 8 and the match will be streamed live on the Sky Sports YouTube channel. Also, Sky Sports will be showing every game of the 2019 Vitality Netball World Cup in July.
