T&T se­nior net­ballers' los­ing tra­di­tion against New Zealand at the Net­ball World Cup (NWC) con­tin­ued when the "Ca­lyp­so Girls" fell to a heavy 76-27 de­feat at the Cape Town In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion Cen­tre in South Africa, on day.

The 2019 Net­ball World Cup cham­pi­ons raced in­to a nine-goal lead be­fore goal-at­tack Joelisa Coop­er could slot in T&T’s first goal of the tour­na­ment. With Grace Nweke notch­ing up a flaw­less 100 per cent shoot­ing record at the oth­er end of the court in the first quar­ter, the Sil­ver Ferns were 23-2 up by the first break.

They con­tin­ued that mo­men­tum in­to the sec­ond quar­ter, Ma­ia Wil­son com­ing on for Nweke and con­tin­u­ing the 100 per cent scor­ing record. But T&T coached by for­mer in­ter­na­tion­al um­pire Joel "Twig­gy" Young-Strong man­aged to find their shoot­ers in the cir­cle with more reg­u­lar­i­ty – wing at­tack Shantel Seemu­n­gal and lat­er cen­tre Ale­na Brooks work­ing hard in mid­court – scor­ing nine goals of their own to take the score to 43-11 at half time.

It was an even bet­ter third quar­ter for the Caribbean na­tion as they be­gan by match­ing New Zealand goal-for-goal for the first 10 min­utes and en­joyed 57 per cent of the pos­ses­sion. They once again scored nine goals but re­strict­ed the Sil­ver Ferns to just 15 as New Zealand coach Noe­line Tau­rua gave each of her play­ers some court time. T&T con­tin­ued their pos­i­tive per­for­mance in the fi­nal pe­ri­od, but ul­ti­mate­ly the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons wrapped up the re­sound­ing vic­to­ry.

Al­though suf­fer­ing the heavy 49-goal de­feat, coach Young-Strong was pleased with her side’s per­for­mance, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the sec­ond half.

She said, “New Zealand is New Zealand—they were the World Cup win­ners so it was tough. We took a lit­tle too long to set­tle in but when we set­tled in we did some good things, we did some great things and I am very pleased with the goal that we set—to lift our goals against New Zealand and we did that so we cel­e­brate some small wins to­day."

Feed­ing the ball in­to the shoot­ing cir­cle was a ma­jor headache for the T&T as the "Ca­lyp­so Girls" shoot­ers were close to per­fect. Goal-shoot­er Afeisha Noel net­ted 17 goals from 18 at­tempts and Coop­er was flaw­less, con­nect­ing all 10 of her tries in a match, which T&T trailed through­out 23-2 in the first quar­ter, 43-11 at the half and 58-20 in the third.

New Zealand’s South African-born de­fend­er Karin Burg­er was named the "Most Valu­able Play­er".

“I was hap­py with the start. I thought we were quite dom­i­nant,” said Tau­rua af­ter­wards.

She said, “There are some el­e­ments we’ve been work­ing on and I could see that out on court. I thought that as the game pro­gressed we sort of pulled our­selves apart or the op­po­si­tion did and we be­came re­ac­tive but it’s a good start for us and we know the ar­eas we can im­prove on.”

New Zealand cap­tain Ameliaranne Eke­na­sio added: “I think we did start well but we have to make sure that we con­tin­ue to rise above the phys­i­cal­i­ty when it comes so it was a good chal­lenge for us…

“Ob­vi­ous­ly we had mul­ti­ple com­bos out there but we’ve al­ways talked around the fact that no mat­ter who is on we have to be able to do our job so it’s just get­ting that con­sis­ten­cy across the quar­ters but good for us to know now where we can grow,” added Tau­rua.

To­day, the T&T will be back on court fac­ing Sin­ga­pore in their sec­ond Pool D match from noon (T&T time), be­fore clos­ing out against Ugan­da to­mor­row at 10 am. Yes­ter­day, the Sin­ga­pore­ans suf­fered a huge 79-37 de­feat to the Ugan­da team.

Yes­ter­day's re­sults

T&T 27 (Afeisha Noel 17/18, Joelisa Coop­er 10/10) vs New Zealand 76 (G Nweke 31/31, Ma­ia Wil­son 21/23, Te Paea Sel­by-Rick­it 16/20, Ameliaranne Eke­na­sio 8/9). Quar­ter scores: 1st. 23-2, 2nd. 43-11, 3rd. 58-20 (All in favour of New Zealand).

Ugan­da 79 vs Sin­ga­pore 37

Aus­tralia 86 vs Zim­bab­we 30

Ja­maica 105 vs Sri Lan­ka 25

South Africa 61 vs Wales 50

Ton­ga 56 vs Fi­ji 51

Eng­land 90 vs Bar­ba­dos 29

Malawi 55 vs Scot­land 49

To­day's match­es

New Zealand vs Ugan­da; Zim­bab­we vs Fi­ji, 3 am

Aus­tralia vs Ton­ga; Ja­maica vs Wales, 5 am

South Africa vs Sri Lan­ka; Scot­land vs Bar­ba­dos, 10 am

Eng­land vs Malawi; T&T vs Sin­ga­pore, noon