Silver Ferns Promise More Pain For Suzy Drane

Wales have been warned to expect another tough night when they take on the Silver Ferns on Wednesday.

The two sides meet for the second time in two days at the Ice Arena, Wales with New Zealand promising an improvement despite their emphatic 92-27 victory in the first Test.

Wales were given a runaround by the second best team in the world and the Kiwis’ coach Janine Southby has vowed there will be more to come.

“We still had a few patches that weren’t up to the standard we know we need to be playing at. There’s certainly some work-ons,” Southby said.

“Generally, we hit the targets we were looking at. We did roll some changes and some really untried combinations. Credit to the players that they got stuck into the work.”

The evening was more about projection, development and profile for the sport in Wales, than any significance in the anticipated nature of the result.

Wales, ranked 8^th in the world, were always going to face a difficult task in both Tests, but a crowd of almost 3,000 and streamed coverage on-line has hinted at the sport’s potential growth in the multi-media age.

Wales made it tough for themselves, committing a whopping 47 turnovers, many of which the Silver Ferns capitalised off.

The visitors led 21-9 at the end of the first quarter and were 45-18 at the break.

The Silver Ferns continued to dominate with the scores at 67-25 going into the final quarter.

Wales scored only twice more in the last period as New Zealand added 25 more goals.

But Wales captain Suzy Drane has insisted her team will learn from the first encounter and be better prepared for the return clash.

Drane said: “Our consistency is what let us down. This is the start of our journey to Commonwealth Games 14 months away and we’re going to take the positives – what we did well and make sure we do those more consistently.

“We’re not going to be looking at our scoreline. We’re going to be looking very much on our performances. We always knew it was going to be difficult.”