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By Stuart Reid

New players of UWS sirens, Scotland’s only professional netball team, turned out at UWS Paisley campus today. The new players welcomed primary school pupils from a number of schools in and around Paisley for a meet and greet, as well as looking forward to the upcoming season.

New Coach, Tanya Dearns, looked forward to the new season and the hope and expectations for her new squad for the season

“We are looking for girls who are keen to push this team even further forward and to keep improving”

“We are not only looking for girls who are amazing players, but we are looking for people who are amazing people and people who can encourage others to get involved in the sport and push them forward to achieve even more.

The coach then went on to look towards the new season,

“Last season we finished 6^th, so this season I think we should be looking further ahead than that and aiming for top 4 finish.”

This was a view that was shared by Sirens player, Jo Pettitt

“I think finishing 6^th last season was a successful season, however I think this year we should be aiming for a minimum of 4^th and if we reach that then there is no reason why we can’t look even further ahead than that.”

UWS Professor, Craig Mahoney, expressed his views about the importance of this team and the importance of getting young girls in to sport,

“This squad are a good group of girls and great role models for younger girls wanting to get in to the sport.

“Back home in Australia, netball is a massive sport with young girls always keen to get involved in the sport, and I feel that something like the UWS sirens will do a lot in the way of encouraging even more girls to get involved in the sport.”

The sirens have their first home match of the season, at the emirates arena in Glasgow, on Monday 26^th February against Team Northumbria and sirens star, Emily Nicholl looked forward to this, the importance of a home crowd, and the busy year ahead,

“The opening home game is always important because you always want to get off to the best possible start.

“We hope as many people as possible turn out to support us and we want to put on the best possible show for them so that they are entertained and want to keep coming back to see us”

Nicholl added,

“The Commonwealth games are next year and we have a number of players who are looking towards that as an end gol for this year,

“if we have players involved in that it will be a maker of the hard work that we have put in throughput the season and we, of course hope that the sacrifices we make during the season and beyond don’t go unnoticed and the commonwealth games is the perfect reward.”