Nigel Si­mon

Wes­ley "Pepe" Gomes, coach of the T&T se­nior women's net­ball team says he is con­tem­plat­ing mak­ing a few changes to his team for its open­ing match against Eng­land. The teams will meet in the Net­ball Eu­rope Rank­ing Com­pe­ti­tion and Open Cham­pi­onship, in Belfast, North­ern Ire­land, to­day from 5.30 am (TT time).

The tour­na­ment will serve as the fi­nal in­ter­na­tion­al test for T&T ahead of the 14th Net­ball World Cup in Syd­ney Aus­tralia, from Au­gust 7-16, this year. Speak­ing from the Hilton Belfast Tem­plepatrick Ho­tel & Coun­try Club where the Ca­lyp­so Net­ballers are based, Gomes said: "We are now com­ing off a Three Test se­ries against Eng­land and hav­ing to play them first up again with­in three days gives me the chance to pos­si­bly change up my team."

He added: "Both us and Eng­land will have ba­si­cal­ly the same teams for the tour­na­ment and I dont think there is any­thing else we can do or they can to sur­prise each oth­er. "So for me and my staff, while we will be go­ing out to try and win the game as al­ways, we al­so have to be re­al­is­tic and smart in our ap­proach."

On Mon­day, Eng­land com­plet­ed a 3-0 Three Test se­ries sweep of T&T when it saved its best per­for­mance for last, in a 69-36 vic­to­ry at Echo Are­na, Liv­er­pool to add to win in the first two match­es, 65-42 on Wednes­day in Som­er­set and then, 67-42 on Fri­day in Lon­don. With re­gards to the Eng­land se­ries, Gomes said over­all it was a sat­is­fy­ing one for him, in that the team showed im­prove­ment. "We knew it was al­ways go­ing to be an up­hill bat­tle against Eng­land, but for us it was about work­ing on our weak points and I think we were able to play a num­ber of com­bi­na­tions and see where we still need to im­prove".

The T&T coach said that de­spite the cold con­di­tions, most of the play­ers have adapt­ed well with co-cap­tains Joelisa Coop­er and Can­dice Guer­rero as well as main shoot­er, Saman­tha Wal­lace the stand-out per­form­ers. Gomes was al­so full of praise for rook­ie se­nior team mem­ber Aman­da Cameron, adding, "She (Aman­da) was ac­tu­al­ly se­lect­ed as part of my de­vel­op­ment process with play­ers from the Un­der-21 teams to the se­niors, and I must say I am very pleased with how she has coped when giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty on the court, she has fit­ted in like she was al­ways part of the team".

Gomes not­ed that if peo­ple were be­ing re­al­is­tic then they would all agree that the top four ranked teams in Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Ja­maica and Eng­land were a class above the rest of teams in the top ten rank­ings.

He said: "Peo­ple need to put things in per­spec­tive and re­alise that those top four coun­tries have put in the hard work and have the fi­nan­cial back­ing and it is of my be­lief that if we can get that same kind of sup­port, we can reach our tar­get of be­ing back in the top six with­in the next year."

To­day, the tour­na­ment will serve off with 34th ranked Gibral­tar against Ire­land (#28) from 3.30am in the rank­ings round-robin com­pe­ti­tion which will al­so see 36th ranked Mal­ta fac­ing Switzer­land at 11.30am.

And in the oth­er Open Di­vi­sion match­es, 11th ranked Scot­land meets sixth ranked South Africa from 7.30am while Wales (#8) faces host and 12th ranked North­ern Ire­land from 11.30am, fol­lowed by Eng­land's sec­ond match of the day, this time against South Africa. At the World Cup in Ju­ly, the "Ca­lyp­so Net­ballers" who won the world ti­tle in 1979 joint­ly with the Aus­tralia and New Zealand will come up against the top two teams in the world, host Aus­tralia and New Zealand in Pool A as well as Caribbean ri­vals Bar­ba­dos in round-robin play in Aus­tralia.

T&T will come up against the top two teams in the world, host Aus­tralia and New Zealand in Pool A as well as Caribbean ri­vals Bar­ba­dos in round-robin play in Aus­tralia.

Pool B of the 2015 Cham­pi­onship fea­tures world third and fourth ranked teams, Eng­land and Ja­maica as well as Scot­land and Samoa, while Malawi, South Africa, Sin­ga­pore and Sri Lan­ka com­prise Pool C, and the quar­tet of Fi­ji, Wales, Ugan­da and Zam­bia make up Pool D with the match­es card­ed for the 21,000 seat All­phones Are­na (for­mer­ly known as the Syd­ney Su­per­Dome and Ac­er Are­na), Syd­ney Olympic Park.

T&T team

Saman­tha Wal­lace, Kem­ba Dun­can, Joelisa Coop­er, Can­dice Guer­rero, Rhon­da John-Davis, Jel­lene Richard­son, Onel­la Jack, Kali­fa Mc Collin, Aman­da Cameron, Afeisha Noel, Daystar Swift, Kielle Con­nel­ly.

Tech­ni­cal staff: We­se­ly "Pepe" Gomes (coach), Grace Patkin­son-Grif­fith (as­sis­tant coach), Ke­va Stephens (fit­ness coach), Car­ol Git­tens (man­ag­er).

T&T start­ing line-ups vs Eng­land

0 GS–Wal­lace, GA–Coop­er, WA–Jack, C–Guerero, WD–Con­nel­ly, GD–Dun­can, GK–Swift

Game Two: GS–Wal­lace, GA–Mc­Collin, WA–Jack, C–Guerero, WD–Con­nel­ly, GD–Dun­can, GK–Swift

Game One: GS–Wal­lace, GA–Coop­er, WA–Jack, C–John-Davis, WD–Guerero, GD–Dun­can, GK–Swift