South Africa lost 49-67 to the Jamaicans, nicknamed The Sunshine Girls.
Spar Proteas play against the Jamaica known as the Sunshine Girls during the Netball World Cup 2023 on 30 July. Picture: Supplied/Netball SA
CAPE TOWN – It was no lazy Sunday in the Mother City as the preliminary stages of the Netball World Cup wrapped up much to the delight of another sold out crowd. The Spar Proteas faced the higher ranked Jamaica in their final Pool C encounter and it was not meant to be for the hosts.
South Africa lost 49-67 to the Jamaicans, nicknamed The Sunshine Girls.
They are ranked 4th on the World Rankings (one ahead of South Africa) and their quality shone through in the first quarter as they raced ahead with South Africa only managing to take the lead eight minutes into the first part of the game thanks to veteran goal shooter Lenize Potgieter – who continued her accuracy throughout the match.
Jamaica’s captain, Jhaniele Fowler, was on point as well and was the thorn in the hosts side throughout.
Carrying on from the first quarter, goal attack Elmere van der Bergh struggled with shot conversion and when she was subbed off her shot shooting accuracy was 50%.
Nichole Taljaard, who came on for Van der Bergh, made an immediate impact and worked well with Potgieter to keep the scoreboard ticking much to the delight of the crowd.
It wasn’t enough though, the third quarter did the damage and Jamaica raced ahead once again scoring another 20 goals to SA’s three.
In the final quarter, as expected, the hosts put up a fight with the spectators at the Cape Town International Convention Centre getting louder by the minute to help the team over the line. The goal-shooting pair of Ine-Mari Venter and Taljaard worked together like a well oiled machine closing the gap goal by goal.
The game ended with the Sunshine Girls claiming a 67-49 victory to top Pool C with South Africa in second spot.
In terms of the other African sides featuring at the tournament Malawi bagged a 84-48 victory over Barbados in Pool B to solidify second spot behind England in their pool.
Meanwhile, Uganda got back to winning ways defeating Trinidad & Tobago 74-34 and Tonga beat Zimbabwe 55-46.
World number one and two, Australia and New Zealand, were dominant in their wins over Singapore and Fiji respectively. Both Australia and New Zealand top their pools.
There were also wins for England and Wales.
Coming up is the second stage of the tournament with South Africa now in Pool G.
The top three teams from Pools A and B move forward to form Pool F, while the top three teams in Pools C and D form Pool G.
The bottom team from each pool (A4, B4, C4, D4) move forward and form Pool E.
In this stage, each of the teams play the three teams from the other Pool that has joined them in Group G. e.g. the three teams from Pool C play the three Pool D teams.
Matches in this stage may end in a drawn result.
Once all the matches have been played in this stage each team finishes with five match results.
The goal is to finish in the top two of either Pool F or G in order to make the semifinals.
Semi-finals – F1 v G2/G1 v F2
This means South Africa will now face Trinidad & Tobago (after they finished third in Pool D) on Monday.
The game starts at 18:00.
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