Namibia’s senior netball team, the Desert Jewels, head coach Sunette Burden has said the upcoming Tri-Nations Tournament will provide much-needed game time and equally serve as a great opportunity to prepare well ahead of the all-important Africa World Cup Qualifiers, slated for later this year.
The coming Tri-Nations tournament will take place in Blantyre, Malawi, in two weeks’ time and will see the Desert Jewels squaring off against Zimbabwe and host country Malawi.
With a busy schedule ahead of them, coach Burden yesterday said her girls have been hard at work, preparing for the tournament – and judging from the players’ overall determination, they will give Malawi and Zimbabwe a good run for their money.
“Malawi and Zimbabwe are ranked 7th and 12th in Africa, and we are ranked 22nd. Also note that at last year’s Africa Cup, we ended fourth, Zimbabwe fifth and Malawi third. So, that actually goes to show that we have what it takes to compete and possibly come out tops against both nations,” said a confident Burden.
“The majority of our players were playing in the MTC Netball Premier League. Our preparations have been ongoing well and we have been focusing on the rectifying some little errors we made at last year’s Africa Cup. The players are going through strengthening and conditioning sessions to enhance their endurance, reflection time and speed. We are also putting special emphasis on our specialisation sessions, systems and combinations; more specifically long court setup and so forth,” she added.
In terms of expectations at the coming tri-nations tournament, Burden said they will be gunning for a place at this year’s Africa World Cup Qualifiers in South Africa
“As coaches, we will have an opportunity in competition to assess our setup as a team, and also see how well the players can execute our game plans, skills and knowledge while under pressure and fatigued. This tri-nations series is an opportunity to prepare for the Africa World Cup Qualifiers, scheduled for 20-25 August in Pretoria, South Africa. Ultimately, the expectation is to improve our rankings as well and also hopefully qualify for the next netball world cup.”
On how the team was selected, she said: “Invitations were sent out to establish the availability of our various top players, and each player was selected based on performance, technical skills, agility and various variables that are specific to their respective playing positions and the general game. Players were also given opportunities to trial in a second-best playing position, giving them an opportunity to showcase skills to correctly classify players into their correct positions and assess adaptability to a possible second playing position,” she said.