T&T's se­nior net­ball team is yet to get a win in the sec­ond stage of the pre­lim­i­nar­ies at the Net­ball World Cup (NWC) in South Africa.

On Wednes­day, the "Ca­lyp­so Girls" were beat­en 89-26 by Ja­maica in their penul­ti­mate Group G match of the NWC pre­lim­i­nary stage two at the Cape Town In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion­al Cen­tre.

Medal hope­fuls Ja­maica took on Caribbean ri­vals T&T for the 11th time mak­ing sure of the com­fort­able vic­to­ry to con­tin­ue their course to­wards a semi­fi­nal spot – which was con­firmed lat­er in the evening when New Zealand drew with South Africa, 48-all.

The World Cup head-to-head count be­tween the re­gion­al na­tions stood at four-all with two draws since their first meet­ing back in 1963, but this time around it was all Ja­maica. Re­ju­ve­nat­ed af­ter a day’s break on Tues­day, the Sun­shine Girls had no trou­ble rac­ing to a 14-goal (20-6) lead by the first break.

Adean Thomas was im­pres­sive at wing at­tack while Shan­ice Beck­ford was al­so work­ing hard at goal at­tack – putting up just one less shot than goal shoot­er Romel­da Aiken-George in the first half. That saw the Sun­shine Girls ex­tend­ing their lead to 34 goals (44-10) by half-time de­spite the ef­forts of cap­tain goal-keep­er Shaquan­da Greene-Noel, who had re­placed co-cap­tain Daystar Swift and goal-de­fence Jameela Mc­Car­ty.

Ja­maica's de­fence al­so stood strong against T&T shoot­ers Afeisha Noel and Joelisa Coop­er, as the Ca­lyp­so Girls’ er­ror count mount­ed, con­ced­ing 29 turnovers in the first half. By the end of the half, they had added just four goals to their to­tal.

There were plen­ty of changes for Ja­maica in the third quar­ter in­clud­ing Jhaniele Fowler com­ing on at goal-shoot­er and Re­bekah Robin­son at goal at­tack. While the dy­nam­ic be­tween the two was dif­fer­ent to that be­tween Aiken-George and Beck­ford, it was no less ef­fec­tive as the Ja­maicans con­tin­ued to put even more dis­tance be­tween them­selves and the op­po­si­tion, fin­ish­ing the third quar­ter 50 (69-19) goals up.

It was all changed again in the fourth quar­ter as coach Con­nie Fran­cis con­tin­ued to ro­tate play­ers ahead of the Ja­maicans’ show­down against New Zealand to­day. But the Sun­shine Girls main­tained the in­ten­si­ty to wrap up the em­phat­ic 63-goal win, with cen­tre Nicole Dixon-Rochester named as Most Valu­able Play­er on the day she played her 50th cap for Ja­maica.

"Com­ing in­to this game we knew it would have been a tough match for us but we were pre­pared for it," said Swift adding that they need­ed to be sharp­er in their move­ments. "We did it at times but con­sis­ten­cy in that area was lack­ing and that is some­thing we need to fix mov­ing in­to to­mor­row's (to­day) game against Wales.

The T&T net­ballers will try to shake off the loss as they take on Wales, who fell to Ugan­da 73-56 on Wednes­day, in their fi­nal Group G match at 3 am.

"We re­al­ly need play­ers to dri­ve hard to the ball some­times, make short sharp move­ments and less of those aer­i­al balls."

Again, T&T shoot­ers were ac­cu­rate in the shoot­ing cir­cle with Noel net­ting 20 goals from 22 at­tempts and her goal-at­tack Coop­er adding six from eight tries but the Ca­lyp­so Girls' chal­lenge re­main, not be­ing able to feed the shoot­ers ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly.

"Our team chal­lenge, more so, has to do with that con­nec­tion be­tween the mid-court and the shoot­ers and that is some­thing we re­al­ly do need to get to­geth­er mov­ing for­ward," said Swift.

The last time the teams met at the 2019 edi­tion of the NWC, the Ja­maicans won 68-43.

Wednes­day's re­sults

Pre­lim­i­nary sec­ond stage (Group F and G)

T&T 26 (Afeisha Noel 20/22, Joelisa Coop­er 6/8)vs Ja­maica 89 (Romel­da Aiken 38/43, Re­bekah Robin­son 15/17, Shan­ice Beck­ford 20/24, Jhaniele Fowler 16/18). Quar­ter scores: 1st 20-6, 2nd 44-10, 3rd 69-19 (All in­favour of Ja­maica)

Wales 56 vs Ugan­da 73

South Africa 48 vs New Zealand 48

Group E round three

Zim­bab­we 68 vs Sin­ga­pore 40

Sri Lan­ka 60 vs Bar­ba­dos 56

Sec­ond group stage

Group F

Team P W D L GF GA Pts

Aus­tralia 4 4 0 0 333 153 8

Eng­land 4 4 0 0 285 150 8

Malawi 4 2 0 2 202 229 4

Ton­ga 4 2 0 2 195 255 4

Scot­land 4 0 0 4 170 249 0

Fi­ji 4 0 0 4 159 308 0

Group G

Team W D L GF GA Pts

Ja­maica 4 4 0 0 292 164 8

New Zealand 4 3 1 0 261 153 7

South Africa 4 2 1 1 227 193 5

Ugan­da 4 2 0 2 240 205 4

Wales 4 0 0 4 180 292 0

T&T 4 0 0 4 115 308 0

Thurs­day's match­es

Wales vs T&T, Aus­tralia vs Eng­land, 3 am

Ja­maica vs New Zealand; Fi­ji vs Scot­land, 5 am

South Africa vs Ugan­da, 10 am

Ton­ga vs Malawi, 12 noon