The Newcastle Eagles return to SLB Championship action at the Vertu Arena on Saturday night for the first time in 2026 to take on the reigning SLB regular season champions Oaklands Wolves. It will be a really tough test for Head Coach Chloe Gaynor’s side.
Last time out the Eagles dropped their first game of the 2025/26 campaign before Christmas at Caledonia. The Gladiators taking away Newcastle’s 100% record and knocking them off the top of the league standings.
Eagles were again hit by their injury jinx for that game with leading scorer and rebounder Andrea Daley missing through injury. Gaynor though was philosophical about that defeat.
“We started to see the effects of having a shortened roster with different people being in and out being available through injury. When you come up against a strong side like Caledonia they are going to punish your mistakes by taking any advantage they can.”
“Ultimately the game was not lost by us not having ‘Drea it was lost by us not fulfilling what we had to do defensively. Regardless of who’s on the floor if you’re going to let a team score over 100 points you’re going to be in for a long day.”
Whilst the loss was disappointing it was also the first one of the league campaign and Eagles had won the previous five. Something Gaynor had aimed for and her team had achieved.
“If you’d told me we’d be 5-1 and a good portion of that without Jada Dapaa and Sarah Wells then I’d have been extremely happy with that. The girls have done an extremely good job of managing that through different circumstances and finding ways to win.”
“That will help us through the course of the season. We’ve got some key wins early and hopefully that will aid us down the stretch and we look forward to getting back to a knock effect of having a full roster.”
It’s going to be a big game on Saturday night when a team as talented as Oaklands come in to the Arena for a very crucial clash as Gaynor explained.
“Oaklands last year were really good. As well as winning the league they also made all three finals and won the Cup and have returned a good core of that group and added to it. We’ll treat their roster with the respect it deserves. It’s going to be a tough match-up.”
“It’s not something that happens very often in our league that we see them in the Cup semi-final next week at their place as well so it’s going to be an interesting two weeks for both teams.”
“They’re big, they’re strong and they can do a little bit of everything inside and out. There’s definitely a lot of things we need to be aware of with them.”
As ever though Gaynor believes the keys to the game are how her team perform within the standards and principles they set.
“The key after the Caledonia game has to be us and committing to our style of basketball. Whether we’re missing players or not we have to make sure we find our identity and commit to doing what we said we would do. So for us it is about us and not about them.”
Oaklands currently have a 3-3 record in Championship play. A record they very much want to improve, Meanwhile Gaynor and her Newcastle Eagles will be looking to get back to winning ways in front of their loyal home fans. Tip-off at the Vertu Arena is at 7:30pm.
