Netball Super League | Q&A: Lightning’s Ella Clark

Loughborough Lightning have contested back-to-back Vitality Netball Superleague Grand Finals but have narrowly missed out to Wasps Netball in both 2017 and 2018.

With a new Director of Netball, Sara Bayman, in charge, the East Midlands-based club are ready and raring to go in 2019.

Ahead of the season, we caught up with Ella Clark to get her thoughts on the team’s strengths and ambitions.

What are the team’s main strengths?

I think people this year won’t really know what to expect from us because we’ve had a whole overhaul of players and have got a new team chemistry and new combinations so no one will really know what to expect and that might cause problems in how to defend and attack against us. We’ve got quite a few hidden strengths – I want to say hidden because they haven’t had that much exposure so it’ll be interesting to see how they fare.

How are you feeling about the new season?

Definitely excited! Pre-season is almost as long as the season so when the season comes around, I’m ready for it!

What are your hopes and aims for 2019?

Third time lucky?! We definitely want to get to that top four. I mean everyone’s going to say that they want to win it but we’ve missed out two years in a row now so we’re just clawing at it. We want that medal around our necks this time.

What’s it like working with new Director of Netball Sara Bayman?

Sara’s cool – she’s obviously been a player for many years so we get that experience and she’s trying to hand that experience over to us which is nice. She’s good in the way that she interacts as obviously we’ve got some young players and she’s good at pushing them forward in what we need to do to get better. She’s found out what we need to work on and is really pushing us with that.

You can get tickets to watch all 10 teams in action at the Super 10 season opener here.