It’s been a pretty hectic week. We had two games back-to-back on Saturday and Monday and we experienced the two extremes in terms of emotions. On Saturday we beat Surrey Storm at home in what was out best performance of the season. Everyone was firing on all cylinders, on and off the court, everything really clicked and you could see that in how we played. I was awarded Player of the Match which was amazing and it came as a total surprise because literally every single member of our team could have been awarded it. The home crowd was unbelievable again too, they make such a difference and are the reason we’re really nailing our performances at home.
We need to transfer that home form to our away games though as on Monday we lost a really tight match 55-52 to Celtic Dragons in Cardiff. It was tough having such a short turnaround but we were a bit flat and we need to make sure we get a handle on that if we want to achieve our goal of finishing in the top four.
This week, we’ve been working really hard on picking ourselves up after that defeat and we’ll have a relaxing weekend before going up against Manchester Thunder at the Emirates in Glasgow on Monday. They beat us by four points earlier in the season so we’re really out to get revenge and turn that result around and we’re feeling confident about doing that with the home crowd behind us.
This is my first season of playing in the Superleague and I have to admit that it’s been everything I hoped for and more. My netball is improving week in, week out – that’s happening with all the Scottish players and what’s so great about that is it’ll really benefit the national team.
What I’ve really loved about Sirens’ matches and the home games in particular is the hundreds of young girls who are coming to watch us. I’m just finishing my degree in PE teaching so I work with kids a lot and what I see through my job is that a lot of kids don’t have any role models or anything to aspire to. But I’ve spoken to so many kids after our games who now are aiming to become netball players and that’s amazing. A few of us even got recognised in a restaurant the other week which is something I never thought would happen. It really motivates us when we know we have that support and so we need to use that backing to drive us on to more victories.
Nicola McCleery, 21, is a Scottish internationalist who has won five caps for her country.
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