T&T Un­der-21 net­ballers should fea­ture in next year's Net­ball World Youth Cup.

On Wednes­day, the In­ter­na­tion­al Net­ball Fed­er­a­tion (INF) an­nounced that the qual­i­fiers due to be held in Amer­i­c­as, Africa, Eu­rope and Ocea­nia by Oc­to­ber, have been can­celled and the Board has de­cid­ed to use INF World Rank­ings to de­ter­mine the qual­i­fiers for these re­gions.

This was con­firmed by T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNA) pres­i­dent Dr Pa­tri­cia Butch­er, yes­ter­day.

"Cor­rect. The Qual­i­fiers have been can­celled," said Butch­er. "Ja­maica, T&T, Bar­ba­dos and St Lu­cia are the teams that are el­i­gi­ble to par­tic­i­pate in the tour­na­ment based on the lat­est World rank­ings as at May 29, 2020. The an­nu­al world rank­ings will be con­duct­ed by INF at the end of June 2020. Match­es played be­tween Ju­ly 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017 will be dropped off and a new list will be cir­cu­lat­ed.

"I an­tic­i­pate that hard­ly any in­ter­na­tion­al match­es will be played in our re­gion be­tween now and when the de­ci­sion is made re par­tic­i­pa­tion by re­gions at the World Youth Cham­pi­onship tour­na­ment. We await fi­nal se­lec­tion in­for­ma­tion from the INF."

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease by the INF, the gov­ern­ing body host­ed sev­er­al on­line Re­gion­al Road­shows to en­gage with its Mem­bers and Re­gions dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The road­shows pro­vide guid­ance on in­ter­na­tion­al events and re­in­force INF’s com­mit­ment to pro­vide and share frame­works and tools for a safe re­turn to Net­ball. INF has over 70 Mem­bers span­ning across five Re­gions; Net­ball Africa, Net­ball Amer­i­c­as, Net­ball Asia, Net­ball Eu­rope and Net­ball Ocea­nia.

INF’s first Re­gion­al Road­show was held on Sun­day with Net­ball Eu­rope via the on­line video com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool, Zoom. Liz Nicholl CBE, INF pres­i­dent, led the road­show along­side INF CEO, Clare Br­ie­gal. 17 ad­min­is­tra­tors of Net­ball Eu­rope joined the on­line meet­ing. The sec­ond was held on Tues­day with Asia Net­ball and a fur­ther three were sched­uled for this past week.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion has com­plet­ed a glob­al sur­vey of the sport to de­ter­mine how Mem­bers are af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic, their cur­rent po­si­tion on lock­down and how INF could as­sist in their re­turn to play.

Nicholl shared the re­sults of the sur­vey which demon­strat­ed that al­though some coun­tries are be­gin­ning to emerge from lock­down, as their cas­es of the virus de­cline, there is still great un­cer­tain­ty with over 50 per cent of Mem­bers un­sure when their Gov­ern­ments might be re­view­ing the po­ten­tial for a re­turn to safe sport.

The INF World Rank­ings was pub­lished yes­ter­day and re­flect­ed all match­es played be­fore in­ter­na­tion­al events were can­celled as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic. The INF Board is con­sult­ing with its Mem­bers re­gard­ing the treat­ment of World Rank­ings dur­ing the re­turn to in­ter­na­tion­al play.

These rank­ings in­clude the games played in Jan­u­ary 2020 at the Vi­tal­i­ty Net­ball Na­tions Cup. The tour­na­ment saw New Zealand, Eng­land, South Africa, and Ja­maica com­pete across four venues in Eng­land, with New Zealand be­com­ing the cham­pi­on.

There was on­ly one change in po­si­tion, with Ja­maica (who were run­ners up at the Vi­tal­i­ty Na­tions Cup) mov­ing up to third mar­gin­al­ly ahead of Eng­land who move down to fourth, they both have a rat­ing of 172. New Zealand re­mains sec­ond; their rat­ing in­creas­es from 179 to 182 clos­ing the gap with Aus­tralia in first po­si­tion and South Africa stay in fifth with an im­proved rat­ing of 148.

T&T "Ca­lyp­so Girls" are ranked 10th while fel­low Caribbean neigh­bours Bar­ba­dos is 12th and St Lu­cia, 20th.