And There Was Four

The line up for The Co-operative Netball Superleague (CNSL) play-offs has now be decided after a string of thrilling matches over the weekend.

TeamBath, Mavericks, Loughborough Lightning and Leeds Carnegie will compete for the CNSL winner’s title.

Next Saturday (21^st March), Mavericks will play host to Leeds Carnegie. Leeds earned their place in the top four for the first time in the league’s history after an agonising wait to see if Brunel Hurricanes would overtake them in the race to the fourth play-off position.

Assistant coach at Leeds Carnegie, Marian Lofthouse is delighted with the teams tremendous achievements of making it into the CNSL play-offs.

“This is only the second season that our director of netball, Anna Newell has been with Leeds. Our place in the final four highlights the aims and ambitions of Leeds Carnegie for the future within netball. We’re looking forward to the match against Mavericks and hope to give our best performance yet. A standard has now been established for the team and we will be aiming to replicate and improve on this for future seasons,” Marian commented.

The first match of the play-offs will see the losing team leave the competition. The winning team will make it through to third playoff.

The second play-off match sees TeamBath take on Loughborough Lightning on Monday (23^rd March). The undefeated TeamBath will play a strong Loughborough side as they aim to clench a win. Loughborough’s only loss of the whole season was to Bath, in December by 11 goals and again last weekend with a two-goal defeat.

Loughborough Lightning coach Olivia Murphy said: “We’re really pleased with our performance so far, gradually building up to the play-offs which are the most important matches of the season.

“We’re really looking forward to facing TeamBath a week today as if we beat them it will be a direct route to the Final!”

The match will act as a decider for the third play-off match as the losing team will play either Mavericks or Leeds Carnegie from match one. Only after this match will we know who will go forward to play in the Grand Final with the winning team on Saturday 4^th April at Coventry’s Skydome Arena at 7.30pm.

CNSL followers are being advised to book tickets for the play-offs and the Grand Final early as venues are expected to sell out quickly.

Don’t miss your chance to see the top Superleague teams battle it out to win the coveted title of Winners of The Co-operative Netball Superleague 2009.

For more information and ticket sales log onto:

www.englandnetball.co.uk/National_Leagues/Superleague_0809/grand-final.php