While the girls did not come away winners, they built into the competition nicely and, after a slow start, managed some competitive results against very tough opponents. 

The Under 17’s emerged from their first seven matches of the weekend with five losses and two draws, but their next 13 matches produced seven wins, and they finished in twelfth position out of 21 teams who took part. 

Coach of the Goulburn side, Simone Blay, said that she was very proud of the effort that her side put in over the course of the weekend. 

“They actually were very competitive,” Blay said. 

“They beat two of the teams in the top ten in their round of games, and they drew with two others, and two others they only lost to by two points.” 

What makes the effort from the Goulburn side more impressive is that many of the players were younger than their opponents. 

“We didn’t really know what to expect [from the competition],” Blay said. 

“The Under 17’s division is a mixed division, in that it’s 16 and 17-year-olds.

“It was our first year of being in that mixed division and having to play against older players.

“The majority of our team were 16 … so we were a reasonably young team to be playing in that division.

“With all of those factors, I think the girls have done extremely well.” 

The advantage of competitions like this one is that it highlighted the areas that need improvement from the team, and Blay said that there was one area of the team that she will seek to address following the tournament. 

“We already knew going into the weekend that our weakness was the lack of dedicated defensive players,” she said.

“So we had to use our other players who perhaps aren’t specialist defenders to make up our shortfall in defence.

“For us, making sure we have specialist defenders there for next year would be something we would absolutely work on to make sure we’re as strong as we possibly can be.

“The other thing is really just ensuring our intensity is up in every single game we play.” 

However, Blay was extremely impressed with the girls’ ability to move the ball through the midcourt. 

“In the past ,that’s been an area where they’ve kind of got clogged and struggled to get the ball feeding into their attack end,” she said.

“They really sorted that out over this weekend, I was impressed with that.”