Sunshine Girls eye spot in World Championships final

Robert Bailey, Gleaner Writer

With the appointment of former Australian coach Jill McIntosh as technical director, along with three specialist coaches, head coach of Jamaica's Sunshine Girls team, Connie Francis, said she now believes they stand a realistic chance of reaching the final of next year's World Netball Championships, which will be held in Singapore.

"Come the World Championships, the idea is for us to be in the final, and that is what we are looking at right now because we know that we possess the talent, but we never seem to follow through to the finals," Francis said.

"We also have specialist coaches working with our girls in order to improve their skills in all areas, and I think they have really started to show improvement in our practice sessions," said Francis.

National Under-21 coach C. Lloyd Walker, national Under-16 assistant coach, Minetth Reynolds, along with former player Oberon Pitterson, are the other coaches who have been appointed by Jamaica Netball Association president, Marva Bernard. They will report directly to McIntosh each week.

Programme going well

"Jill has already fitted in well, because we are working from her programmes and it has been going extremely well for us," said Francis. "She is not here, but via her emails, we get our areas of work to do, and she has already laid down certain things that she would like to see us do and so we are just following it," she said.

Francis noted that they had stepped up their training immensely and the girls had been making the sacrifice by training six days per week, instead of their usual four.

"I must thank them for this because this is something we are not accustomed to, but they realise that this is we have to do in order for us to catch up the other teams in the world," said Francis.

Meanwhile, the fourth-ranked Sunshine Girls will be hoping to start the new year on a positive note when they oppose the world's number-one side, Australia, in a three-Test series, which will be held from January 12-16 at the National Indoor Sports Complex.

The series, which is dubbed the Supreme Ventures Sunshine Series, will see the first Test match on January 12, followed by the second game two days later. The final match of the series will be played on January 16.

Francis noted that her players were very optimistic going into the series. "We are very confident going into this series, because we will be playing at home, and we always seem to play our best games here in Jamaica," said Francis, a former national player.

The last time Jamaica faced Australia in a Test series at home, it ended 1-1. The Sunshine Girls were then whitewashed 3-0 by the hosts when they visited Australia last August.