For­mer T&T net­baller Kali­fa Mc­Collin and Kedah Sun­shine suf­fered a 39-60 de­feat at the hands of KL Wild­cats in their third-place play­off of the Malaysian Net­ball Su­per League (NSL), or­ga­nized by the Malaysian Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with As­tro Are­na, at the Juara Sta­di­um, Buk­it Kiara, Kuala Lumpur on Sun­day.

A day ear­li­er, Mc Collin and the Kedah Sun­shine were out­played 60-46 by Tereng­ganu Mar­vels in their semi­fi­nal at the same venue yes­ter­day, while Jo­hor Jew­els tamed last year’s win­ners KL Wild­cats 65-48 in the oth­er.

In the cham­pi­onship de­cider, Tereng­ganu Mar­vels got the bet­ter of two-time cham­pi­ons (2022 & 2023) Jo­hor Jew­els, 70-63, to se­cure their first-ever ti­tle and an un­beat­en sea­son as well.

Mc Collin and the Kedah Sun­shine en­tered the semi­fi­nals as the fourth-seed­ed club af­ter they end­ed the reg­u­lar sea­son with a 4-3 win-loss record and 12 points, the same as KL Wild­cats, but with an in­fe­ri­or av­er­age of 110.03 per­cent to the for­mer’s 130.74.

Dur­ing the fi­nal week­end of league match­es, the 30-year-old Mc­Collin suf­fered a shock­ing 36-43 de­feat at the hands of Per­ak Phoenix be­fore they re­bound­ed in style to over­whelm de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons KL Wild­cats 58-44 and fol­lowed it with a com­mand­ing 88-38 thump­ing of Se­lan­gor An­gels on Sun­day, for the high­est-ever scor­ing game in the NSL.

In the open­ing week­end of match­es, Kedah Sun­shine de­feat­ed Pa­hang Tulips 48-42 but was then beat­en by Tereng­ganu Mar­vels 43-59. In Week Two, Kedah Sun­shine stormed to a 63-41 whip­ping of Mela­ka Mys­tic but was then hum­bled 37-72 by Jo­hor Jew­els.

Tereng­ganu Mar­vels fin­ished the reg­u­lar sea­son with sev­en wins from as many match­es and a max­i­mum of 21 points, while Jo­hor Jew­els was sec­ond with a 6-1 record and 18 points. KL Wild­cats edged Pu­tra­jaya Dy­na­mites in the 2025 fi­nal 46-45.

Mc­Collin and her team­mates now shift their fo­cus to the NSL Re­gion­al Cup, which takes place from May 14-17, where they will join Tereng­ganu Mar­vels, Jo­hor Jew­els, and KL Wild­cats as well as in­ter­na­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sneak­ers Sin­ga­pore in a round-robin se­ries.

Pri­or to join­ing Kedah Sun­shine, Mc­Collin, who played both the goal-at­tack and goal-shoot po­si­tions for the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) and was named the “Most Valu­able Play­er” of the Courts All Sec­tors Net­ball League for the third sea­son in a row, now joined a host of in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers from renowned net­ball na­tions, in­clud­ing Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Ja­maica, South Africa, Ugan­da, Malawi, Zim­bab­we, and Botswana, in sign­ing with the Malaysian NSL in an ef­fort to en­hance the league’s com­pet­i­tive­ness and pro­vide lo­cal play­ers with valu­able ex­po­sure.

She pre­vi­ous­ly played in Eng­land for both the Celtic Drag­ons (2016-2017, 2019) and the Lon­don Mav­er­icks (2018) as well as with the South­ern Steel in the ANZ Pre­mier­ship in New Zealand in 2020 and the Sun­corp Aus­tralian Net­ball Su­per League with the now-de­funct Colling­wood Mag­pies.

2026 In­di­vid­ual ho­n­our roll

Most Valu­able Play­er: Far­i­ha Razak (Jo­hor Jew­els)

Best Im­port: Laua Lang­man ((New Zealand/Jo­hor Jew­els)

Best De­fend­er: Adalia Jas­mine (Tereng­ganu Mar­vels)

Best Shoot­er : Mais­arah Af­fan­di (Tereng­ganu Mar­vels)

Best at­tack­er: Siti Mais­arah (Tereng­ganu Mar­vels)