TELSTRA Store Olympians out-enthused Flames and nabbed a share of the points as reward on Sunday.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
It wasn’t the win they were after but the next best thing, with Claudia Nielsen tieing the scores up at 1-all after Alicia Thornton had put Flames in front.
Both sides had their chances to break the deadlock.
Olympians probably had the better of them late, but to no avail.
“We certainly had our opportunities to beat them,” stand-in Olympians coach Vicki Constable said.
She said they played a good team game.
“It was a good team effort and we looked for good options,” she said.
“And there was lots of talking from the back.”
The talk was as good as it has been all year.
Nielsen put away the equaliser after a good cross from Brittany Parker.
Parker was involved in a lot of Olympians’ good play. She and sister Sarah gave good support on the inside to Dana Constable, who controlled things well in the midfield.
Libby Grills in goals also had another great game but she was backed up by the girls in front of her.
They did a pretty good job as a team of shutting down Naomi Spark and Kimberley Resch.
While they couldn’t stop Flames getting the ball to them, the defence got to them before they could take it into the circle a lot of times.
It admittedly wasn’t one of Flames’ best performances for the season.
They seem to have fallen away in the last couple of weeks, with Olympians a lot hungrier and out-enthusing them, and their usual fluency missing.
“We turned over too much ball and didn’t keep our structure,” Flames coach Adam Straub said.
Their structure was pretty poor.
The first half last round against Waratahs was similar but the difference between Sunday and the week before was they still managed to get a win and were better in the second half.
“Our option-taking in our attacking 25 was really poor,” Straub said.
“We created space and some opportunities but our finishing in attack was pretty poor.”
“We were looking for the crazy goal rather than the simple pass to our team-mates.”
Fortunately, their scrambling defence was good.
“But we put too much pressure on our defence,” Straub said.
He said Helena Williamson was good at the back and Alicia Thornton was strong at inner.