T&T se­nior women's net­ball team goal de­fence Daystar Swift watched on from the side­lines as her Robin­hood North­ern Stars en­joyed a mixed re­turn to com­pe­ti­tion in the six-club Net­ball New Zealand ANZ Pre­mier­ship last week­end.

It was the first week­end of match­es in the league as it re­sumed af­ter 96 days on non-ac­tiv­i­ty due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic which has af­fect­ed sports and econ­imies all across the globe.

Play­ing at Auck­land Net­ball Cen­tre on Sun­day, Stars went un­der to Te Wanan­ga O Raukawa Pulse be­fore re­bound­ing to de­feat The Good Oil Tac­tix on Mon­day.

Led by cap­tain Grace Kara in her mile­stone 150th league match, a re-en­er­gised Robin­hood North­ern Stars tri­umphed over The Good Oil Tac­tix, 49-43.

Com­ing off a tough loss to the Pulse the night be­fore, the Stars played like a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent side, dom­i­nat­ing in all thirds of the court to score their first win from three games this sea­son.

On Sun­day, in their first match back af­ter the long break for the pan­dem­ic, a ram­pant

Te Wā­nan­ga o Raukawa Pulse marked their re­turn to com­pe­ti­tion in em­phat­ic style with a stun­ning 63-39 win over Robin­hood North­ern Stars.

With mul­ti­ple changes for this year, and 28-year-old Swift on the side­lines as she con­tin­ues her re­cov­ery from a torn right knee menis­cus surgery, the Stars were up against a set­tled op­po­si­tion in the re­match of last year’s Grand Fi­nal and that fa­mil­iar­i­ty paid off in spades for the Pulse.

With the short­ened quar­ters of 12 min­utes for the du­ra­tion of the league, the Pulse en­sured how im­por­tant a quick start was as they rat­tled in the first five goals be­fore the Stars found their feet.

Ex­cept for a game first quar­ter fight­back from the Stars, it was the Pulse who dom­i­nat­ed. Shoot­er Aliyah Dunn pro­vid­ed a clin­i­cal per­for­mance un­der the hoop with a 44-goal re­turn from 46 at­tempts while goal­keep­er Kel­ly Ju­ry had a men­ac­ing pres­ence with six in­ter­cepts and four de­flec­tions dur­ing her stint of just over three-quar­ters of the match.

The oth­er New Zealand-based T&T in­ter­na­tion­al, goal-at­tack Kali­fa Mc Collin was on the los­ing side on Sat­ur­day af­ter her As­cot Park Ho­tel South­ern Steel fell to Tac­tix, 36-43 with the T&T in­ter­na­tion­al scor­ing 22 of 27 at­tempts to drop to a 0-2 record.

Cur­rent­ly, Pulse sits atop the ta­ble with eight points, ahead of North­ern Mys­tics on goal-dif­fer­ence fol­lowed by Stars with five points, Splice Con­struc­tion Mag­ic and Tac­tix with four apiece, and point­less Steel.

In round three match­es, Mc Collin will be in ac­tion on Sat­ur­day, June 27 against Mys­tics and a day lat­er ver­sus Stars, the club of Swift, both at the Auck­land Net­ball Cen­tre, from 1 am (TT time).