Canberra extinguish Blaze

Canberra won its final match of the regular season, defeating Hills Blaze, 45-38 in Canberra yesterday.  Canberra welcomed back young left back Matt Cechet, following a break of two months to recover from an elbow injury. Table and Results...

Canberra and Hills exchanged goals early, with Hills taking advantage of sloppy defence from the home team.  However, Canberra began to regain focus, closing their gaps and captialising on turnovers to push to a half time lead of 23-16. 

Canberra started the second half slowly, failing to capitalise on several scoring shots, allowing Hills to claw back the margin to 4 goals.  However, Canberra managed to regain its focus and re-establish its dominance, pushing the lead out to 11 goals midway through the second half.  Some two minute suspensions and careless errors in the last few minutes allowed Hills to close the gap to make the result more respectable, but Canberra emerged clear victors, 45-38. 

Tomasz Lasek top scored for Canberra with 14 goals.

Next week, Canberra plays Hills Heat in the semi-final in Sydney for a spot in the 2011 League final.  

Harbourside out, UTS last

Harbourside will miss out on this year's final after losing a crucial game to Sydney Uni, on Saturday.  The loss opens the way for Blaze to fight-out in the other semi-final, next week, against this year's premiers Sydney University.  UTS finished last in the competition failing to register a single win, to make matters worse for the wooden-spooners, NSW Handball Association has penalised them 9 competition points, for failing to meet their obligations.

Canberra defeated UTS 45-38 (23-16)

For Canberra: Tomasz Lasek (14), Callum Mouncey (8), Luciano Da Silva (7),  Andrew Lawrence (4), Sasha Petrovski  (3), Jordan Chapman (3), Matt Cechet (2), Xavier Orsatti (2), Taip Ramadani (1), ,Dragan Radicoski (1),  Matt Lacey (GK).