Super Netball 2024: West Coast Fever look to expose inconsistent Sunshine Coast Lightning in must-win final

West Coast Fever coach Dan Ryan is wary of the underdog Sunshine Coast Lightning as they prepare for a must-win minor semifinal at RAC Arena on Sunday. Lightning went into the season as heavy favourites after assembling a powerhouse side led by key recruits in former Fever captain Courtney Bruce and one-time Melbourne Vixens star Liz Watson. Sunshine Coast only snuck into the finals though, finishing in fourth with a losing 6-8 record across the season, while Fever were only percentage off a top-two finish. Remarkably, Fever have won nine of their past 10 games against the Lightning including a 25-goal thumping in round two of this year. Lightning haven’t defeated Fever since round 10, 2021, but Ryan said they were still capable of pushing his in-form side. “They have struggled with consistency across the course of the season. From round seven to round 14 they’ve been win, loss, win, loss,” he said. “That’s something that we need to keep front and centre and understanding for us that consistency is the key to our success across a 60-minute game. “We’re also mindful that they’ve got some big game players who know how to show up in a finals series, so we need to make sure that we’re the team applying the pressure, we’re the one that’s executing our skills of a high standard, we’re the one that’s putting on a defensive impact.” Fever have made a name for themselves as a scoring powerhouse, finishing the season as the only team to score more than 1000 goals with Jhaniele Fowler-Nembhard leading the way with 813. Ryan said it was important that they continued with their process to ensure they remained a high scoring in finals despite the added pressure. “If we reflect on our past month, our form has been really good and we’ve been refining parts of our game that we knew were really important,” he said. “We go into it knowing that we’re tracking and trending in the right direction, but with that real level of awareness that a finals game is a new level of pressure, a new level of intensity and for us it’s about now finding the next gear in our game. “Based on what we’ve done over the past month, we’re really building towards that and there’s no better time than a do-or-die semifinal to bring out your best netball and that’s what we’re aiming for.” Asked about taking on their premiership skipper Bruce in a big final, Ryan said they were “single-minded” in their focus. “It’s something that we’ve acknowledged that certainly could be a part of the contest,” he said. “For us, we’ve been so good in the past three weeks being laser-focused and single-minded in what we’re trying to accomplish out on that court. “It’s about sticking to our processes and getting the job done and ensuring that we’re just playing the game the way we want to play it.”