NIGEL SI­MON

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

T&T stand­out net­baller Saman­tha Wal­lace-Joseph scored a team-high 28 points to lead de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Lough­bor­ough Light­ning to a 71-59 win over Leeds Rhi­nos in Round Nine of the Net­ball Su­per League on Sat­ur­day.

In ad­di­tion to goal shoot­er Wal­lace-Joseph, goal at­tacks, Berri Neil with 12 goals and El­la Clark with nine were the oth­er main con­trib­u­tors for two-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Light­ning while Joyce Mvu­la had a match-high 31 goals for Rhi­nos in the losss to car­ry her league-lead­ing goals tal­ly to 308 from 402 at­tempts at 86 per cent. This was the same tal­ly as Man­ches­ter Thun­der’s Elmere Van Der Berg, who has net­ted 309 from 425 at­tempts at 85 per cent while Wal­lace-Joseph who missed four of her team’s ear­ly en­coun­ters due to in­jury is eighth amongst the scor­ers with 156 from 204 at­tempts at 89 per cent with team­mate Clark, next with 137 goals from 219 at­tempts at a 76 per cent shoot­ing av­er­age, and Neil, 11th with 101 goals from 170 at­tempts at 77 per cent.

With the win, the Lough­bor­ough Light­ning aim­ing to clinch a third con­sec­u­tive ti­tle briefly moved to the top of the eight-team ta­ble with a 7-2 record and 22 points.

Just one point sep­a­rat­ed the two sides go­ing in­to the fi­nal five min­utes of the sec­ond quar­ter be­fore Light­ning turned the screw in the ‘su­per shot’ pe­ri­od, outscor­ing Rhi­nos by nine points to two.

They moved fur­ther ahead af­ter the break, end­ing the third quar­ter lead­ing 54-39 at the Sir David Wal­lace Are­na.

And while the vis­i­tors worked hard to re­duce that deficit in the clos­ing stages, Light­ning al­ways looked ca­pa­ble of cap­i­tal­is­ing on their greater shoot­ing ac­cu­ra­cy.

How­ev­er, on Sun­day, Lon­don Pulse moved back to the top of the stand­ings with an 8-1 record and 24 points via their 63-53 der­by win against the Lon­don Mav­er­icks at Wem­b­ley Are­na.

The top two will meet when Pulse hosts Light­ning at the Cop­per Box Are­na in their next match on Sun­day, 18 May.

Else­where, Man­ches­ter Thun­der se­cured a 72-58 win over Not­ting­ham For­est to go third in the ta­ble with a 6-3 mark and 19 points, while the Mav­er­icks are fourth at 5-4 and 16 points, three ahead of Not­ting­ham For­est (4-5).