Nottingham Knights show their strength in end of season tournaments

Nottingham Knights is a netball club based in West Bridgford. The club was formed in 2001 by several of its current members and over the eight years of its existence the team has worked its way up the divisions of the Nottinghamshire league to become a regular feature in the Nottinghamshire premier division. The club is made up of a mixture of young and experienced players who have played at a variety of levels including county, university, national league and international as well as having an ex-welsh national coach.

This season, whilst being hit with several pregnancies, Knights had a decent season in the premier league but topped it off with fantastic performances at the Carol Fletcher Memorial Tournament in Sheffield and the play-off tournament for the East Midlands Regional League.

On 7th June 2009 nine Knights players made the trip up north to compete in the second Carol Fletcher Memorial tournament at the fantastic indoor venue the EIS in Sheffield. Carol Fletcher, a good friend of regular umpire for Nottingham Knights this season, Sue Collin, was instrumental in setting up the netball centre in Sheffield. All teams in the tournament were strangers to Knights and they came up against tough opposition in the first match, losing by a couple of goals. However, the team quickly found their mojo and eventually won all their other games in the morning rounds and succeeded in getting into the quarter finals. Knights came up against a very good team in the quarters but hit the ground running winning the first half 7-1. However, the opposition fought back in the second half but couldn’t overturn the 6 goal deficit from the first half. Knights therefore advanced into the semi-final where they eventually lost to very tough opposition but were very pleased with their overall performance.

On Saturday 11th July 2009 nine teams were to play a round-robin tournament with the top two teams gaining entry to Division 2 in next season’s East Midlands Regional League, a step up from the county league Knights have currently been playing in and a very valuable prize indeed. Nottingham Knights started positively by convincingly winning their first four games, one of which was against one of the favourites for the tournament. Taking the momentum into the following two games which were against Nottingham teams, so effectively local derbies, Knights won one and drew the other making them the only team left in the tournament undefeated. They then repeated these results in the final two games meaning that Knights qualified to play in the regional league next season.

Coach Justine Drury said ‘This is a fantastic step forward for the club and means we will have the opportunity to play indoor netball at a higher level during the winter season as well as keeping our place in the Nottinghamshire premier division. It was an awesome performance from all 9 players none of whom should be singled out as everyone fought hard and played well to gain this success. Not a bad achievement for a club that started in division 3 a few years ago.’

Next season Nottingham Knights hope to build on their success by working hard to improve fitness and work on speed and agility in their Monday night training sessions alongside the usual netball skills they practise. This has been made possible due to the fact that Knights managed to gain sponsorship from The Monkey Tree in West Bridgford and have therefore been able to buy new training equipment. This sponsorship money will also go towards subsidising their entry into the East Midlands Regional League.

Knights are always looking for new players of all abilities. If you are interested in finding out more please e-mail sartley@gwdschool.org.