Nevers eyes gold at Netball World Cup

Sunshine Girls assistant coach Winston Nevers, strongly believes that Jamaica should no longer be satisfied with placing below Australia, New Zealand, or England at major world tournaments.

According to Nevers, Jamaica has, for too long, settled for bronze or below, at these championships. He believes that the country’s netballers have the quality to challenge the status quo, and he intends to launch that assault on the gold starting with the 2019 Netball World Cup in Liverpool, England, next July.

“It’s time for us to win now. Australia and New Zealand are the two top teams in my opinion, and we have quality players and things in place that can make us win or put us in a final,” he said.

Nevers is confident that Jamaica can beat any of the world’s five top teams, but he has some concerns. These include concentration and decision making during matches, height in mid-court and shooting from long range. These, he said, must be addressed before they can challenge the big guns consistently.

“Jamaica will have to look at the little areas, as those small things mean a lot when it comes to winning a tournament. I have identified things that I want to work on, as over the years we have been losing matches in the last quarter. That I put down to concentration and decision making and these are some of the areas we are working on. It is not because of the skills. We have no problem in receiving the ball, the problem over the years is to deliver, we are not delivering the ball,” he said.

Nevers also stressed the need to have competent long range shooters and taller players in centre court. “ Jamaica has tall players in the shooting area and the defensive area but we break down in the mid court, so it’s problem when making the centre pass. When making centre pass we want to it to go to the circle as quickly as possible.

“There is a young lady playing in the pro league, that is doing so well as a shooter. She is the player of the tournament, Gezelle Allison of Manchester Spurs. She is awesome. If we take Gezelle and coach her to play goal-attack or wing attack in our mid-court, we would get balls quickly to the attacking area, and I am not looking at her alone.

“Another area we need to improve on is making that one pass in the circle and then shoot. Australia and New Zealand are comfortable shooting eight feet away from the goal but we want to get all the way under the post. They shoot from anywhere in the circle because that is what they practice. I am working on hitting shots from eight feet and I want to get it right between now and July,” he said.

The Netball World Cup will take place from July 12-21 in Liverpool, England.