Coach Jon Fletcher was left ferrying injured players to hospitals by game’s end in what proved a horror night for the Tasmanian Magpies.
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“I’ve been driving people to doctors and getting hands looked at and just all sorts of things,” he told The Examiner hours after the game.
The state’s ANL side turned in a 46-26 shocker against Queensland Fusion in Brisbane on Saturday night.
The changerooms soon after the loss resembled more of a casualty ward, with nearly more players injured than not.
“We’ve got some concerns from tonight’s game after our keeper hurt her hands and she is getting that looked at,” Fletcher said.
“We’ve got a couple of girls who are a bit sore, plus Cody (Lange) is now unavailable for Sunday and she was only allowed to play a half.”
Lange, one of the very few survivors left injury-free, had returned for her first game in more than a year from a knee reconstruction.
The Magpies were without Gabby Sinclair from injury suffered in last Sunday’s back-to-back return bout against Victorian Fury.
Fletcher said the forced inclusions on Saturday night could have thrown out the balance of the team.
“We had a couple of new faces in the team, but that wasn’t really the reason for the disappointing game,” he said.
“We actually got the ball a bit. We had quite a lot of possession in the first quarter and second quarter, but we just couldn’t capitalise.
“We couldn’t get the ball to a shot or sometimes didn’t shoot as well as we would have liked.
“I would say we had high amount of possessions, but just low percentage of getting it into a scoring zone.”
Fletcher called keeping the Fusion to just 17 goals up until half-time as “really outstanding”.
But the defenders’ efforts were cast aside when just 11 goals were scored in attack.
The Tasmanians hit their lowest ebb when they were lucky to score three goals from just six shots during the second quarter.
“It was just one of those nights,” Fletcher said.
“We certainly presented enough ball to ourselves.
“But just unforced errors were high, skill errors were high and we just didn’t put it together at all.”
The Magpies will be forced to bounce back little more than 12 hours later in the return game.
Fletcher had to admit the turnaround will be tough for Sunday.
“We’ll certainly be saying that it’s a game that we’ve got to put behind us and not dwell on it, but there was certainly a lot of things from our own game that we need to address,” he said.
“We won’t just walk off and say ‘it just didn’t happen’.”