Bathurst goes down to perennial powerhouse Orange in West-Central West Regional League Netball decider

Orange continued their run of success at the region's top netball competition by claiming a convincing 66-23 victory over Bathurst in the grand final.

Bathurst were down 13-5 after the first quarter and still in reach of the home side, and they managed to do better in the next period as they put on nine points.

Unfortunately for Bathurst the Orange squad put on 16 points of their own to extended the lead to 29-14 at half-time.

From there the Orange momentum and dominance across the court proved too difficult to contain.

On the bright side for Bathurst their first and second string teams finished second and third on the ladder respectively after they had a strong last round of results on Sunday.

Bathurst 1 found a crucial 25-20 win over Dubbo 1 to move into second place and give themselves a confidence boost ahead of their finals games.

Bathurst co-coach Tina Muller said it was a shame to not be fully staffed for the finals but the city's two teams should be proud of the build up towards the final game.

"It was a bit of a disaster in the finals round for us. The games leading up to it were really good though. Both our Bathurst teams were great," she said.

"We had key players going down left, right and centre. The format probably didn't help us either. We had half games and then the semis and the final were full games.

"It's tough going into a final with no subs. We didn't even have enough players in our 1s team to take the court at one point so we had to borrow players from the second team and that left them short.

"I'm really proud though of the way that the girls played against Orange."

Muller said Orange's playstyle is a tough one for Bathurst to go up against, and the experience of the defending champions shone through.

"Orange are a physical team - always have been. We don't tend to play with that physicality. We usually play more off-body defence so when you're getting knocked for hours on end it can take a toll, both mentally and physically," she said.

"They're years younger than the Orange team as well. We hope that in the future these young ones continue to come through and keep coming through and develop their skills and build their strength up."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: