THE Melville Marlins and UWA City Beach Bears both won their respective Women’s Premier League semi-final match ups on Saturday to book a spot in this week’s grand final.

The Women’s Premier League semi finals took place at HBF Stadium on Saturday starting with the UWA City Beach Bears defeating Triton 13-1 to be the first team into the 2016-17 grand final.

With one spot in the grand final determined, it was time to find out their opponent and it was the Melville Marlins who defeated the Phil Johnson Plumbing & Gas North Coast Phoenix 16-3.

The grand final will now take place this Saturday afternoon at HBF Stadium between the Melville Marlins and UWA City Beach Bears at 4.30pm.

Making the premiership decider have some added intrigue is the fact that both teams will be made up largely of National Water Polo League players from the Fremantle Marlins and UWA Torpedoes respectively.

And to top that off, they are playing a NWPL Western Derby this Friday night at UWA Aquatic Centre.

Looking back on the semi finals, the UWA City Beach Bears clash with Triton was up first with the Torpedoes having a national league contest with the Brisbane Barracudas to play that evening.

The Bears got on the scoreboard first after three minutes thanks to one of their non-Torpedoes players, Sam Shead.

They then went up 2-0 a minute before quarter-time thanks to rising star Madi Rigo.

Triton were fighting hard, though, and got on the board early in the second term thanks to Rhani Valentine.

That’s as good as it would get for them, though, but at half-time the game was still up for grabs with the Bears only leading 3-1 following a second goal to Rigo.

It then took just four minutes of the third quarter for UWA City Beach to quickly score four goals courtesy of Pippa Pedley, Rebecca Liddle, Amy Wylde and Neve Annett.

Following a Triton time out to try to stem the tide, the Bears scored three more goals in the last minute and-a-half of the third quarter with Kingsley Hill, Georgia Storey and Rigo all finding the net against Torpedoes goalkeeper Natasha Liddle.

That made the score 10-1 heading into the fourth quarter and UWA City Beach added goals to Shead, Liddle and Liddle again to end up winning 13-1.

Rigo and Liddle both finished with three goals apiece for the Bears with Shead scoring twice. Valentine was the lone scorer for Triton.

Then in the second semi-final, surprisingly it was the underdog Phoenix who started strongly with the opening two goals courtesy of Claire Pierce and Jess Reynolds.

That sent a message to the undefeated Marlins whose only loss was due to forfeit that their grand final place wouldn’t be handed to them on a platter.

Melville did get a goal back before quarter-time from Lauren Martin but North Coast still led 2-1.

It took just 52 seconds for the Marlins to score again in the second quarter through Zoe Arancini. They then added four more before half-time from Arancini, Chloe Nella, Madeleine Quinn and Pia Rodgers to take a 6-2 advantage into the break.

By three quarter-time that had become 12-2 following goals to Martin, Rodgers, Martin again, Arancini, Quinn and then Martin once more.

The Phoenix did get an early goal in the last term thanks to Georgie Powers but the Marlins responded with goals to Sarah Leary, Rodgers, Arancini and Leary again to end up winning 16-3.

Arancini and Martin scored four times each for Melville with Rodgers adding three goals, Quinn two and Leary two.

Now after two dominant semi-final wins and following their national league battle on Friday, the UWA City Beach Bears and Melville Marlins will lock horns for the Women’s Premier League title for 2016-17 on Saturday at HBF Stadium.

SEMI-FINAL WOMEN’S PREMIER LEAGUE RESULTS
UWA City Beach Bears 13 defeated Triton 1 at HBF Stadium
Melville Marlins 16 defeated Phil Johnson Plumbing & Gas North Coast Phoenix 3 at HBF Stadium