Northern Thunder opened The Co-operative Superleague season with a live game on Sky Sports last night.  Despite battling hard and winning 2 of the 4 quarters they went down to Team Bath 54 -41 at the University of Bath.

After a shaky first 6 minutes Thunder found themselves 10 -6 down, however Thunder managed to turn this and go into the first quarter break 13-11 up after defenders Kerry Almond and Emma Dovey both turned the ball over and won rebounds to turn the initial 4 goal deficit into a the 2 goal lead. Thunder closed the quarter out strongly with international centre court duo Jade Clarke and Sara Bayman making an immediate impact on the Thunder side’s game.

The second quarter was the defining quarter with Team Bath shutting Thunder out for the first 8 minutes of the quarter. Team Bath replaced wing attack Amanda Trounce with Sasha Corbin who changed the tempo of the game with good speed and movement giving the Bath attack some great feeds. The Thunder attackers made little impact only scoring 4 goals to Baths 13 in the entire 15 minutes. The half time score was 24 -17 in favour of Bath.

The second half saw the introduction of 16 years old Goal Attack Kathryn Turner for her Thunder Superleague debut. Also Wing Attack Krystal Gayle replaced Rachel Henry. Team Bath brought on 17 year old Goal Shooter Rosie Allison and Trounce was brought back on for Corbin at Wing Attack. Turner missed her first 2 shots and then settled in well. Thunder pulled back 1 goal by the end of the third to win that quarter 11-10. The third quarter ended 34-28 to Bath. Thunder went into the last quarter 6 goals down thinking that they could pull it back, after all they had done it once in the first quarter, but it was not to be and after Thunder scoring the first goal and closing the gap to 5 Bath just seemed to find an extra gear. Bath scored 20 goals to Thunders 13 in this last quarter to end the game with a Bath victory 54 -41.

From Northern Thunders point of view this is a massive improvement on last year’s 44 goals deficit away at Team Bath. Thunder have improved massively since last year and although Team Bath Head Coach Jess Garland understandably does not want to talk about Team Bath being weakened, they quite obviously have been by the loss of 5 key players. This all makes for an interesting season.

Northern Thunder now  take on Surrey Storm at The Castle Leisure Centre in Bury on Sunday at 3pm. Tickets are available and if you saw the game on Sky Sports last night how could you miss it.

Thunder Coach Mike Greenwood said “Although we are bitterly disappointed there are a great deal of positives to take from this performance to take to training with us” he continued “we need to look after possession more, cut down the unforced errors and missed shots, if we had done that this evening it would have been a different story, but we will learn from this.”

Team Bath Head Coach Jess Garland said “We were always confident we were going to win this game but Thunder dug in well and managed to close out each of the quarters.” She continued “we were pleased with what we saw tonight and just need to build on this for the next game against Loughborough Lightning.”

There is no let up for Thunder as they have Surrey Storm at The Castle Leisure Centre in Bury on Sunday at 3.00pm. Tickets are selling fast so don’t be disappointed.