Sunshine Girls net double

André Lowe, Senior Staff Reporter

Having bettered Malawi and South Africa in their opening games at the World FastNet Series in Liverpool, England, Jamaica's Sunshine Girls were in an upbeat mood ahead of today's key clashes against the world's top three.

Jamaica edged the sixth-ranked Malawi 32-30 in their first game yesterday before demolishing South Africa 34-22 in the competition that pits the world's top teams in a fast-paced and action-packed variant of the sport.

Jhaniele Fowler has been in impressive form, only missing twice in the two games played. Fowler shot 18 points from 19 attempts against Malawi before registering a 20-from-21 record against South Africa.

rough spell

However, Australia, New Zealand, and England await the Sunshine Girls, who have endured a rough spell following a disappointing fourth place at the recent Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, as well as crushing defeats to Australia and New Zealand prior to that.

Speaking from her hotel room in Liverpool, Jamaica's head coach, Connie Francis, share that her girls were extremely excited about their positive start, but were more focused on continuing in that vein.

"Netball has had a rough patch and things, aren't exactly going great for us, at this point, but the girls are determined and focused on doing well and lifting the programme," said Francis. "We know we are capable of doing great things, and this is an opportunity for us, and everyone is just focused on doing their best."

Francis continued: "We just have to keep doing what we did in the first two games, continue to work on minimising our turn-overs, shoot well. This is an area that we can tidy up a bit in, and we have to make the most of our power plays if we are going to get the right results tomorrow (today)."

Francis went on to praise the girls for their approach against Malawi and South Africa.

"I'm very confident that we can do well in this tournament. The players were very composed during both games and I'm particularly impressed with the way we dominated South Africa and kept them under constant pressure," Francis said. "We have done a lot of preparation coming into this tournament, running scenarios, and so forth, and we are seeing the fruits so far.

"We are all very excited about this tournament. This is a very different type of competition and one that really, anyone can win," she continued. "They are all happy and in good spirits, even if they are cold."