Team Bath Netball head coach Jess Thirlby predicts Manchester Thunder will come out fighting when the old rivals meet in round two of the ZEO Superleague at the University of Bath tonight.
Team Bath started their campaign with a 59-45 win over Team Northumbria last week, while 2012 Superleague champions Thunder went down 55-48 at home to Surrey Storm.
"They will be disappointed to have lost their first game at home on Monday and they'll be desperate not to lose their opening two," said Thirlby ahead of the game, which will be shown live on Sky Sports.
"We always know we've got a challenge on our hands when we play Thunder, they're always really competitive games.
"They've got a lot of strength throughout the team and options in the shooting circle. We'll need to deprive them of opportunities at goal and make them really work."
Thunder are captained by Sara Bayman, a former Team Bath player and University of Bath graduate.
Thirlby gave court time to nine of her matchday 12 against Team Northumbria last week, including a Superleague debut for 16-year-old King Edward's student
Summer Artman.
"It was good to get Summer out there and give her the experience of playing in front of more than 1,000 people at the Sports Training Village," said Thirlby.
"We played around half of the game at where we wanted to be at this stage in the season – we had a lot of turnover ball that we didn't convert, so we still have work to do."
Both Billy Bowers – back in the Team Bath squad after a seven-year absence at goal-
defence – and goal-shooter Rosie Allison were penalised multiple times for contact during a sloppy start to the Northumbria game.
However, a purple patch in the second period saw Team Bath double their lead from 15-8 to 30-16 at half-time.
The hosts looked more
pedestrian and fallible in the third quarter as Northumbria closed the gap to 42-32 but the best was saved until last as Allison put together a string of long-range shots to seal the 59-45 win.
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