Souness the linchpin on attack
Te Wānanga o Raukawa Pulse midcourter Whitney Souness is relishing her return to top flight Netball, following a season out of the game with a knee injury.
It has taken months of hard work behind the scenes and a strong mindset but it’s starting to pay off for the little pivot in an ever-improving Pulse attack line.
And that’s good news for the Pulse ahead of their next ANZ Premiership assignment against the unbeaten Ascot Park Hotel Southern Steel in Porirua on Wednesday night.
“When we first started off I wasn’t very happy with how I was playing but looking back I was quite hard on myself after just coming back from the injury,” Souness said.
“Now I’m less critical about my performance, am happier with how I’m playing and that has come with time and just actually playing.”
All going to plan, the silky-skilled wing attack is likely to square off against Steel stalwart and captain Wendy Frew, the backbone of the well-drilled southerners.
“She’s really, really tough to play against, just that experience and she doesn’t back down to anyone,” Souness said.
“She’s all about the man-on-man marking so I’m going to have to work around that and change things up a bit.”
A member of the NZSS team in 2013 and the National Development squad in 2014-15, Souness has long been earmarked as a player with a bright future.
From playing just two games when first chosen for the Pulse in 2015 and missing last year altogether, the 21-year-old Bachelor of Sports Science and Exercise student has come back full of promise to play every minute of the current campaign.
“There was definitely a mental barrier I had to get past to actually trust myself again with my new knee,” Souness said.
“But there’s no looking back now. The team’s awesome and I’m just loving every moment I get out there because I’ve never had the experience of regular appearances.”
You can catch Whitney and her Pulse team-mates in action against the ladder-leading Ascot Park Hotel Southern Steel in Wednesday Night Netball – live SKY Sport 4 and the ANZ Premiership Facebook page (fans outside NZ only) from 7.30pm.