NETBALLERS HAVE QUESTIONS TO ANSWER

What really went wrong in Singapore with Jamaica’s Sunshine Girls at the World Netball Championships? After four hard months of preparation, practice matches and confidence building national support, the ladies left for the championships with a new coach, new attitude and a renewed sense of belief.

But instead of putting together a run that would have reflected the efforts given in preparation, the team tripped up, stumbled and crashed out of the tournament in a manner that would most likely suggest that the more things changed, the more they remained the same and even got worse. After soundly defeating South Africa, Botswana, Singapore and Trinidad enroute to the semi-finals, Jamaica faced their first true test in defending world champions Australia.

This was especially what the four months of arduous preparation was for. The semis of the championships, has for as long as anyone can remember, featured the same four teams – New Zealand, Australia, England and Jamaica. During those many years, the outcome was largely the same. Australia would play New Zealand for the title while Jamaica and England battled for the remaining medal place.

Jamaica has always felt that England was relatively easy pickings so the focus was for the most part putting together a game plan that would give the team a chance of playing for the world title. It was time to displace one of the two dominant Australasian teams and vie for the world title. In March, the Jamaica Netball Association employed the services of former Australian coach Jill McIntosh. The intention was to have her help Jamaica modify the way the team prepared for the championships. During the four months Jill worked on improving the fitness of the ladies as she believed Jamaica was only fit enough to play for two quarters not four.

Tactics, mental fortitude and eliminating mistakes were also areas which Jill believed needed to be worked on if Jamaica was to mount a serious challenge to the top three teams and more specifically, the top two – Australia and New Zealand. Almost immediately, things began to change. Greater levels of professionalism were observed from all concerned from the administrators, coaches and players. Jamaica thrashed Trinidad in a practice series and a greater sense of belief was realized after the Sunshine Girls tied a series 1-1 with Australia and beat England 2-1.

In the meantime, corporate Jamaica enticed by what the improvements they were seeing, threw their support behind the ladies. The netball chalet was equipped by Courts, the Jamaica Public Service supplied a brand new bus to add to the one donated by LIME. Digicel continued their support and Jamaica Broilers committed $20.6 million over four years to the team. Jamaica was standing firmly behind their Sunshine Girls. So when Jamaica easily dispatched the minnows, everything seemed to be going according to plan.

Because of the time difference between Jamaica and Singapore, most Jamaicans would have been asleep when the Sunshine Girls went up against Australia early Saturday morning. Most of their supporters would have gone to bed hoping to wake to the news that the Sunshine Girls had managed to overcome the Australian hurdle and had moved on to the finals where they would play the winner of the New Zealand/England encounter. Instead, they woke to the nightmarish news that not only did the Sunshine Girls not win, they were completely annihilated by the world champions 46-82!

No way was Australia 36 points better than Jamaica; perhaps 12 points or less but not 36. However, the destruction forced a look back to the earlier games and it was realized that Jamaica was giving up far too many points to the lesser teams. South Africa scored 45 points against Jamaica, Singapore 40, and Trinidad 42. When you compare how Australia and New Zealand did, it becomes stark. With the exception of Malawi who scored 44 points against Australia, no other team scored 40 points against either finalist before the semis when Jamaica scored 46. New Zealand only allowed England 34 goals. What is even more stark is that except for a couple exceptions Australia and New Zealand only allowed teams about 25 points a game.

Head coach Oberon Pitterson was hired initially as a defensive coach so it’s kind of hard to fathom why Jamaica was so defensively lethargic. The team’s primary defenders Nicole Aiken Pinnock and Althea Byfield seemed out of sync, suggesting that communication between them had somehow broken down. There also seemed to be a lack of defensive intensity, the kind of intensity that generated turnovers off which the team could capitalize. However, the problems were seemingly overlooked because the team shooters Romelda Aiken and Jhaniele Fowler had hot hands and the team was blowing out their lesser opponents. It would turn out to be their Achilles heel.

The team was also not showing the kind of discipline that Jamaicans had witnessed during the series against Australia and England earlier in the year. Large numbers of turnovers created opportunities for other teams to score. Against Singapore, for example,  up to the third quarter, Jamaica had more turnovers than Singapore. The Sunshine Girls won 93-40 when in reality the score should have more resembled 110-23.

Against Australia, Jamaica employed a twin-tower strategy that they hoped would have unsettled the Australians.  Aiken and Fowler, both about six-foot five were made goal attack and goal shoot respectively. I suppose the thinking there was that with the ‘twin towers’ would use their height as an advantage over the Australians. It backfired badly as the Australians – either because they were tipped off or they just planned for it – completely shut down the strategy. In the meantime, the team’s confused defense was unable to prevent the Aussies from running up the score. What made matters worse was that the Sunshine Girls, who had simulated games against the top teams in their preparation, seemed incapable of adjusting to the speed of the Australians’ transition game and literally wilted under the pace of their opponent’s game.

The team – as expected – also lost badly to England in the play-off for third place. The defense continued to leak like a sieve and Jamaica only managed 49 goals while England scored 70; the 21-point margin not reflecting what we would have seen from the girls during their 2-1 series win over England in April.

There are a lot of questions that need to be answered by the administration, the coaches and the players when they return home. What went wrong, why did the team perform so poorly in those critical games despite the intense preparations, was there infighting, what caused the return of the mistakes of indiscipline, and why did the team wilt when they should have risen.

They got the support and the backing of the people of Jamaica, perhaps more than ever before and while in sport results are not always what we hope they would be, the manner of the defeats is what stings most.