Na­tion­al Goal Shoot, Kali­fa Mc Collin missed out on a pos­i­tive end to their 2019 cam­paign in the Vi­tal­i­ty Net­ball Su­per League in Eng­land, af­ter a 56-67 loss at Lough­bor­ough Light­ning on Sat­ur­day.

How­ev­er, Mc Collin still had rea­sons to smile on the week­end af­ter she was vot­ed as the Drag­ons “Play­er of the Year” awardee at their end-of-sea­son awards func­tion which was held yes­ter­day in Cardiff, Wales.

Al­ready as­sured of end­ing the sea­son with its most wins in one sea­son ever, six, four more than the pre­vi­ous two cam­paigns which both end­ed (2-16), vice-cap­tain Mc Collin and her team-mates had a slow start to pro­ceed­ings and end­ed the first quar­ter be­hind, 14-20.

The sec­ond pe­ri­od was a much-im­proved show­ing from the Drag­ons as they matched Light­ning goal for goal, 14-each to go in­to the half-time in­ter­val, be­hind 28-34.

Mc Collin, in tan­dem with Chelsea Lewis, con­tin­ued their good work in the third pe­ri­od, just los­ing out the quar­ter by one goal, 16-17 as Light­ning pushed its ad­van­tage to 51-44.

In the fi­nal quar­ter, the Drag­ons ran out of the fire and fell 12-16 to end the match in de­feat, their 12th such loss for the sea­son for 18 points, the same as Sev­ern Stars and Sur­rey Storm, but sev­en on the ta­ble ahead of the lat­ter.

Mc Collin shot 18 goald from 20 at­tempts...She end­ed the sea­son with 429 goals from 472 at­tempts, eight best on the sea­son, and in three sea­sons in the league, two with Drag­ons and one with Mav­er­icks she has amassed 1180 goals from 1304 at­tempts.

Wasps Net­ball will go in­to the semi­fi­nals as the top seeds af­ter end­ing with a 15-3 round-robin record and 45 points, six more than Man­ches­ter Thun­der, Team Bath and Light­ning, all with 13-5 marks. Sara­cens Mav­er­icks, the for­mer club of Saman­tha Wal­lace was fifth with a 12-6 mark and 36 points while Sirens (3-15) and debu­tants, Lon­don Pulse (2-16) end­ed ninth and tenth re­spec­tive­ly.