South Canterbury will be the first team to get their name engraved on the Senior Whakataetae netball trophy after seeing off all challengers in Ashburton at the weekend.

The senior representative netball tournament run by Mid Canterbury Netball attracted four entries, with the Sidekick Mid Canterbury Seniors joined by South Canterbury, Selwyn and Nelson’s senior rep teams to battle it out at the EA Networks Centre over two days.

It was the second year that Mid Canterbury Netball had run a season-ending senior representative tournament, with last year’s being a last-minute event put on after the cancellation of the South Island Senior Championships. That went so well that Mid Canterbury decided to make it an annual event, put a name to it and put a trophy on the line.

The Senior Whakataetae initially attracted five entries, but North Otago had to pull out a few days out due to injuries, leaving the four teams to play each other in a round robin of hour-long games to find a winner.

South Canterbury sounded an early warning, downing Selwyn in the first game 85-55, before Nelson also produced a strong start, downing Mid Canterbury 62-42. But the afternoon matches were much closer with Selwyn leading Nelson for much of their game before going down in a nail-biter 54-53, while Mid Canterbury’s attempt to avenge their loss to South Canterbury in the Hanan Shield tournament last month fell short, going down 58-49.

That set up the match between Nelson and South Canterbury on Sunday morning to decide the winner, and while it was close, South Canterbury showed their class and won 52-49.

The last battle of the day was between Selwyn and Mid Canterbury to decide third spot, and that was won by Mid Canterbury 54-42.

Mid Canterbury Netball centre manager Erin Tasker said some awesome netball was played over the two days and all teams had enjoyed the event and indicated they’d be back next year.

“We’ve laid a good platform and now we want to build on it, so we’ll be really trying to attract even just a couple more teams for 2024,” Tasker said.

“It’d be great if we could get the likes of Marlborough, West Coast and North Canterbury, and hopefully North Otago will be back next year.

“We really think there’s a place for a tournament like this, for those sort of tier 2 teams who don’t go to the national open champs, and the teams who were here at the weekend agreed. So hopefully we can continue to grow this tournament in the future.”

A massive thank you to all teams for making the trip to Ashburton, and to all of the umpires and bench officials who did an awesome job on the sidelines.

Article added: Tuesday 05 September 2023