Fitness issues arise as Sunshine Girls finish weakly

André Lowe, Senior Staff Reporter

Delhi, India:

Following yet another poor fourth-quarter display by Jamaica's senior netballers, this time during the semi-finals of the 2010 Commonwealth Games against New Zealand, questions are being raised about the girls' physical fitness.

The Sunshine Girls will have to shake off the disappointment of being on the wrong side of yesterday's 59-43 result against New Zealand inside the Thyagaraj Sports Complex, as nemesis England now stand between them and their last chance of a medal at these games.

The Jamaicans, after closing the first quarter, tied on 17 points with the world number-two ranked team, this before staging a third-quarter comeback after they had gone behind by nine points, ended up surrendering to a disheartening 16-point defeat.

The quarterly scores through the first three periods were 17-17, 32-25, 43-36 in favour of New Zealand.

Shooting 90 per cent

Romelda Aiken scored 36 points from 44 attempts and is doing very well, shooting 90 per cent at the Games so far.

Irene van Dyk scored all 32 of her attempts in leading the New Zealanders to their win, which sent them through to the final, where they will play Australia.

Jamaica's assistant coach, Annette Daley, is concerned about the team's inability to maintain momentum throughout the entire duration of the game, a ghost that has haunted them not only here in Delhi, but on several previous occasions.

Daley did not rule out a fitness issue and, in fact, stated that an inspection of each player's physical condition may very well be necessary.

Fitness issues

"The possibility of it being a fitness issue is there," Daley conceded after the New Zealand defeat. "We have to examine the fitness of all players and then see if that is a major factor."

She added: "In any event, the New Zealand team is pretty fit, their style of play is a continuously fast-paced one, we tried to slow it down a little to see if we could counteract that, but we made some crucial errors and that really cost us.

"The girls really didn't pull it together in the fourth quarter, we started it brightly but things fell off terribly as the game went on," she added.

Daley advised that the girls would be allowed to look at their own individual performance ahead of tomorrow's all-important bronze medal play-off against England.

"They are very disappointed, but, right now, we are allowing them to be with themselves and think about the game before we start looking forward to the match-up against England," said Daley. "It is do-or-die, we have to pull it all together for that."

She added: "They always seem to be able to rise to the challenge when playing England ... and we certainly cannot make the same mistakes we made against England either because they are actually playing very well."