National netball coach Sasher-Gaye Henry-Wright attributed the Sunshine Girls’ heavy 80–33 loss to hosts Australia in the final match of their three-Test series in Melbourne yesterday to a lack of fitness and poor execution.
The Jamaicans, who were swept 3–0 by the world number one Diamonds, lost all three matches by an average margin of 31 goals. The Sunshine Girls were beaten 71–42 in game one and 73–41 in game two.
“I think we are not there in terms of our fitness yet and really, in terms of strategic attacking approach to our moving forward. I think this was a tough one for us because the targets that we set, we didn’t achieve them,” said Henry-Wright.
“We really wanted to improve on our scoring and limit our turnovers, and that didn’t happen for us. We were short of one player in Kadie-Ann Dehaney because she was ruled out of the game due to injuries, and so we were short in our defence.”
Australia set the tone early, restricting Jamaica to just six goals in the opening quarter to lead 18–6. The Diamonds extended their advantage to 35–18 at half-time, maintaining firm control of the contest.
Jamaica’s best spell came in the second quarter, when they scored 12 goals while conceding 17, their most competitive period of the match.
Goal shooter Gezelle Allison led the effort, netting 11 goals from 12 attempts in that quarter on her way to a team-high 20 from 24 tries.
LOWEST SCORING QUARTER
However, the Australians pulled away again in the third period to open a commanding 56–28 lead, before closing the game with a dominant 21–5 final-quarter run. The five goals marked the Sunshine Girls’ lowest scoring quarter of the series.
Henry-Wright stated that the back-to-back series defeats to England and Australia have exposed several deficiencies in the Sunshine Girls’ unit, but she noted that they will serve as important learning experiences ahead of the Commonwealth Games.
“It was a challenging series for us, and there are a lot of takeaways and things that we will have to address going forward, going into our preparations for the Commonwealth Games. I, along with the selectors, will have to sit down now and look at the best squad moving forward, coming out of these back-to-back series against England and Australia, before the Commonwealth Games,” she said.
“I think that we are behind in our preparations, compared to Australia’s preparations, and so we will go back and we will certainly look at certain key areas where we have fallen short in both series. Despite these challenges, we definitely have to get the girls super ready in terms of the weak areas that need to be addressed.”
The Sunshine Girls were without a number of their senior players for the series, including the likes of captain Jhaniele Fowler, Shamera Sterling, Jodi-Ann Ward, Adean Thomas, and Shimona Nelson.
