Emily Nicholl says Sirens forced teams in the Vitality Netball Superleague to learn how to stop them, and now everybody knows what they’re up against.
Sirens ended the season in eighth, following a previous campaign where they narrowly missed out on a play-off slot.
Nicholl, from Biggar, who has been selected as vice-captain for the Scottish Thistles at this summer’s Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, says it wasn’t necessarily a step-up in pressure for Sirens.
But she said: “It was such an unpredictable season for all teams.
“Normally when you play teams you might beat them twice, but this year you beat that team once, then they beat you, and someone at the bottom of the table beat someone at the top.
“It was very exciting from a fan’s perspective, but very frustrating as a player – it was just crazy and you knew you had to be on the top of your game for every single game, which shows that netball is taking that step up.
“Although results didn’t fall our way, necessarily, that’s the type of competition that we want to be in.
“A lot of our scores this year, we lost by two, we lost by one... at the start of it, when we came into the Superleague, it was blow-out scores.
“We now challenge every single team, and push them to perform at their best when they play against us.”
Nicholl added: “It was disappointing, overall, with our actual placings, because we are ambitious and want big things, but at the same time we know we challenged everyone.
“It’s not big, wholesale changes that need to happen, it’s just wee tweaks that will get us over the line.”
Nicholl added: “During the Covid year, our whole attacking line-up were brand new to being a starting player in the team.
“Other teams didn’t know what these girls were going to do, they had no expectations on them, they hadn’t done any analysis on them, whereas this year we were the team that everybody wanted to beat.
“People started paying more attention to us, did their analysis and homework on us, which inevitably makes it harder. It’s always the back-up season that’s harder than your first one.
“I think it was a really good learning experience for a lot of the younger ones, to realise what it’s like, how do they learn to back that up and be consistent.”
Nicholl is looking forward to the Commonwealth Games and said: “I think it’s really nice to have that different focus, on Thistles.”
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