The Sureway Wollongong Roller Hawks will have to wait until their final game of Round 3 to exact revenge for their loss to the Queensland Spinning Bullets in Round 2.

 

The Roller Hawks accounted for Darwin and Perth two weeks ago but squandered an 8 point lead with three and a half minutes to go to suffer their first loss of the season against Queensland.

“I think we took a lot more out of the loss than the wins. We let a few get off the leash a bit in that game so we’ve been focussing a lot defensively, so our talk’s been up, our intensity’s been up and we’ve got a few plans to put in place,” says Roller Hawks guard Luke Pople.

 

The loss giving the team a renewed focus at training.

 

“I think we wanted to get into training the next day just to rectify a few of the things we didn’t do well against Brisbane on the Sunday and obviously finishing the weekend with a loss isn’t ideal but it motivates us a lot more to go into this weekend and try and fix the things we can control.”

 

Each team faces a heavy schedule of three games in two days. The Roller Hawks fly to Brisbane on Friday morning ahead of their first game that night against Darwin.

 

“It’s not something that we haven’t done before, we’ve just got to go with it.”

 

They’ll then play Perth on Saturday morning before meeting hosts Queensland later that evening.

 

“It’s going to be a tough one. Two games in one day is not what you do all the time. We’ve got an early one and a late one so we’ve got a lot of time during the day to rest and recover and do all the right things to make sure we’re good to go”

 

While all four teams will compete in the Finals in Darwin, this weekend will be the last chance teams get to play against each other and test combinations. 

 

Round 3 will also determine seedings with 1st and 2nd place getting a second chance should they lose and 3rd and 4th facing sudden death.

 

NWBL Round 3 - Venue: Logan Metro Sports & Events Centre