West Leagues Balance booked passage to their third straight grand final with a comprehensive 56-30 win over Forsythes Business Advisors in the Newcastle open championship major semi-final on Saturday.
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While West coach Tracey Baggs said there was still room for improvement despite the blow-out scoreline, Forsythes mentor Traci Baber described it as "by far our worst performance all year".
"How do you score four goals in 15 minutes of netball and think you're going to come back to a team like West," Baber said.
"I've got no excuses. I honestly don't know what happened in that first 15 minutes. The wheels just fell off everywhere. West were just very, very good and we were terrible."
West, who are the back-to-back champions and three-time minor premiers, shot out to a commanding 17-4 quarter-time lead through dominant defence and high-percentage shooting.
The middle two quarters were closer but West still outscored their counterparts to be up 31-15 at half-time then 41-23 heading into the final period.
"Second quarter was better. In the second and third quarter we were up [for the quarter] then just lost it a little bit in the last four or five minutes of those quarters," Baber said.
"In the last quarter we still played better, we just didn't finish off. We missed a lot of goals in the last quarter. We got the turnovers, we got the ball down and then missed pretty easy shots, really."
She said there would be "plenty of soul-searching" as they prepared to battle Souths in the preliminary final next weekend for the other spot in the championship decider.
While Baber made numerous changes throughout the game, West's were minimal.
"I think they showed really sensible heads and I think the difference between the two teams was when things got fast in the game, our girls slowed it," Baggs said.
"Tara [Andrews] didn't play and Karli [Ireland] was out, so we still haven't had our full line-up and today I was restricted. The two Central Coast girls, Maddie Taylor and Tarsha Hawley, were allowed only half a game."