Rachael Thomp­son-King

T&T net­ball man­ag­er Vanes­sa Forde has made a call to T&T to come out and sup­port the na­tion­al team as it tries to re­tain its Amer­i­c­as Fed­er­a­tion of Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tions (AF­NA) ti­tle which is cur­rent­ly in progress at the Jean Pierre Com­plex in Mu­cu­rapo. The event ends on Sat­ur­day. "T&T is not re­al­is­ing the qual­i­ty of net­ball that is be­ing dis­played here at the Jean Pierre Com­plex. I re­al­ly think they need to come out and sup­port to mo­ti­vate our girls. "They need to come out and hype up the en­tire event so the girls will be more mo­ti­vat­ed to per­form well," said Forde. The "Ca­lyp­so Girls," af­ter three rounds of match­es, re­main un­beat­en along with top-ranked Caribbean side Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos and St Lu­cia, co­in­ci­den­tal­ly three teams they are yet to face along with the USA. The oth­er teams in the com­pe­ti­tion are from Cana­da, Bermu­da and Grena­da. T&T, which is cur­rent­ly ranked eighth in the world, has al­ready beat­en Guyana (104-10), Cana­da (55-28) and Bermu­da (95-18), re­spec­tive­ly and to­day will be chal­lenged by St Lu­cia in the fea­ture match of the evening at 6.30 pm.

Ear­li­er, St Lu­cia, rat­ed 15th, plays Bermu­da in the on­ly match in the morn­ing at 9 am; then in the evening, USA meets Guyana at 5.30 pm on court 1, Grena­da faces Bar­ba­dos (9th) from 5.45 pm on court, Bermu­da Cana­da (25th) from 6 pm. The Ja­maicans, which are rat­ed fourth, are on a bye. "T&T just come out and sup­port the girls. It is on­ly $20 per tick­et and you get to see four games that mean $5 a game, you can't go wrong with that so T&T just come out and share in our pride as the Ca­lyp­so Girls go for suc­cess," Forde added. As­sis­tant coach Althea Mc­Collin, while ap­pre­cia­tive of the turnout thus far, al­so made the call to T&T to come out and see the na­tion­al team rep­re­sent the red, white and black.

"It has been over­whelm­ing so far but we need more sup­port. We are re­al­ly, re­al­ly thank­ful to T&T. "We can't do it with­out them so we are just ap­peal­ing to the na­tion to come out, be­cause we re­al­ly, re­al­ly need them to sup­port the girls," said Mc­Collin, af­ter T&T's third con­sec­u­tive vic­to­ry in the AF­NA tour­na­ment.