Kem­ba Dun­can has been fired as the se­nior na­tion­al women’s net­ball coach. So too, was team man­ag­er Ashelle Legall.

Ac­cord­ing to Dun­can, the To­ba­go-born for­mer na­tion­al play­er, un­til she gets the of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence of her sack­ing, she will not know the full rea­son be­hind the sur­pris­ing de­ci­sion. She is ex­pect­ed to get the full rea­son be­hind her dis­missal via email by Wednes­day. She was in­formed of her dis­missal through a dis­cus­sion with T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNA) pres­i­dent Sher­ryann Black­burn and vice pres­i­dent Lisa Stanis­laus on Mon­day.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports on Tues­day, Dun­can said there were al­le­ga­tions dis­cussed at the coun­cil lev­el of the TTNA, but “to me, it didn’t hap­pen”. Dun­can asked: “If you have al­le­ga­tions, why don’t you have con­ver­sa­tions with the par­ties and ver­i­fy if it re­al­ly hap­pened.”

Both Dun­can and Legall were part of the tech­ni­cal staff that worked with the “Ca­lyp­so Girls”, who last month re­tained the Amer­i­c­as Fed­er­a­tion of Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tions (AF­NA) ti­tle, which it won in 2018 and qual­i­fied them for next year’s Net­ball World Cup (NWC) set for Cape Town, South Africa.

At the Qual­i­fiers held in Kingston, Ja­maica, last month. T&T topped all sev­en teams - Bar­ba­dos, Cay­man Is­lands, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, USA, St Vin­cent, and the Grenadines, Grena­da, and St Lu­cia - vy­ing for a spot in the NWC.

Hosts Ja­maica had al­ready qual­i­fied by virtue of their world rank­ing.

The for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er was told the suc­cess of the team in Ja­maica and their qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the World Cup was a re­sult of the in­volve­ment of the high-per­for­mance coach from Aus­tralia Sue Hawkins, who served as an as­sis­tant coach. She was in­sert­ed as part of the na­tion­al tech­ni­cal staff, ac­cord­ing to Dun­can, “a few days be­fore the tour­na­ment start­ed, which is un­fair”.

Dun­can notes it was “my work as a coach and the team’s ef­fort” that were the rea­sons be­hind the per­for­mance in Ja­maica and not the high-per­for­mance coach.

Mean­while, a play­er who wished to re­main anony­mous said she is not hap­py with the han­dling of the is­sue as the play­ers were on­ly in­formed of the sack­ing on so­cial me­dia.

Black­burn told Guardian Me­dia Sports, “I’m not at lib­er­ty to dis­cuss the is­sue and will pro­vide feed­back as soon as I can.”