T&T Ca­lyp­so net­ballers squan­dered a three-goal ad­van­tage at the start of the fi­nal pe­ri­od to go un­der to world sixth ranked South Africa, 42-46 in their fi­nal match at the Net­ball Eu­rope Rank­ing Com­pe­ti­tion and Open Cham­pi­onship at the Antrim Fo­rum, Belfast, North­ern Ire­land, yes­ter­day.

With the de­feat the Wes­ley "Pepe" Gomes-coached T&T women, who were us­ing the tour­na­ment as part of their prepa­ra­tions for the 14th Net­ball World Cup in Syd­ney Aus­tralia, from Au­gust 7-16, end­ed with a 1-4 record from their five match­es.

Com­ing off their first win on Sat­ur­day, 52-40 over host and 12th-ranked North­ern Ire­land, T&T led by co-cap­tains Joelisa Coop­er and Can­dice Guer­rero were des­per­ate to pick up an­oth­er win, and ex­act re­venge on the South Africa for a 56-40 loss at last year's Com­mon­wealth Games in Glas­gow, Scot­land.

And led by goal shoot, Saman­tha Wal­lace and goal at­tack Coop­er, the Ca­lyp­so net­ballers took a 10-8 lead at the end of the first quar­ter which they ex­tend­ed to 23-19 at the half.

The third pe­ri­od was an even con­test, with South Africa just edg­ing T&T in terms of goals, 13-12 to cut the deficit to 35-32 go­ing in­to the fi­nal pe­ri­od.

With vic­to­ry a pe­ri­od away, T&T man­aged to stay ahead un­til South Africa tied up the score at 38-all with eight min­utes left, af­ter which the Caribbean women strug­gled to get the ball in­to Wal­lace and Coop­er due to un­forced er­rors, and in the end, they came up four goals short.

The oth­er de­feats came against third ranked Eng­land (63-42), Wales (53-46) and 11th ranked Scot­land (45-42) .

Pri­or to the tour­na­ment in North­ern Ire­land, T&T al­so went un­der to host Eng­land in a Three-Match Test Se­ries, 69-36, 67-42 and 65-42.

Al­so yes­ter­day, Eng­land lift­ed the Net­ball Eu­rope Cham­pi­onship crown in style with a 64-22 vic­to­ry over North­ern Ire­land.

The hosts start­ed bright­ly and led 12-9 af­ter the first quar­ter, but Eng­land re­spond­ed with 14 unan­swered points and led 23-19 at the half-time whis­tle led by the out­stand­ing play of tour­na­ment "Most Valu­able Play­er", Pamela Cookey and He­len Hous­by.

North­ern Ire­land had to set­tle for third place in the tour­na­ment af­ter Wales's 43-28 win over Scot­land ear­li­er in the day.

At the World Cup, T&T joint win­ners in 1979 with Aus­tralia and New Zealand, will al­so face those same two teams in Pool A as well as Caribbean ri­vals Bar­ba­dos in round-robin play.

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. (NS)