T&T's Un­der-21 net­ballers were beat­en by Fi­ji, 53-40, in the team's open­ing Pool D match at the Youth World Net­ball Cup at the Ter­cente­nary Sports Hall in Gibral­tar, Sat­ur­day.

Fi­ji was first to score and then T&T equalised. How­ev­er, the for­mer net­ted five unan­swered goals to go up 6-1 be­fore T&T got its sec­ond goal in the sixth minute. The Fi­jians kept up the scor­ing, but cap­tain and goal-shoot­er Maikea Bram­ble and goal-at­tack Keiko Roy re­spond­ed to en­sure a com­pet­i­tive en­counter.

At the end of the first quar­ter, Fi­ji was ahead 14-8. In the sec­ond pe­ri­od, the young "Ca­lyp­so Girls" kept up the chase as the Pa­cif­ic team went up 24-15. How­ev­er, the nine-point ad­van­tage was re­duced to 26-19 at half­time.

The Fi­ji shoot­ers im­proved their at­tack­ing in the third quar­ter to 13 goals ahead (38-25) and went in­to the break, up 42-30.

In the fourth and fi­nal 15-minute quar­ter, the T&T de­fend­ers could not con­tain their ri­vals and trailed 37-51 as Fi­ji went on to win by 13 goals to record their fourth straight World Youth Cup win against T&T af­ter tri­umph­ing in 2017 (55-28), 2009 (52-46) and 2005 (50-45).

Bram­ble led the lo­cal team's at­tack with 36 goals from 41 at­tempts, with Roy sup­port­ing with three from sev­en and Ja­da Hamil­ton, who came as goal at­tack in the fi­nal quar­ter, one off two tries.

In an­oth­er Pool D match, South Africa whipped Bar­ba­dos 102-27 while in Pool A, Cook Is­lands broke the hearts of the home fans af­ter dis­miss­ing Gibral­tar 74-29 in the Cup's open­ing match. Three-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons New Zealand got a win over Zam­bia with­out hav­ing to take to the court as the Zam­bians for­feit­ed the match. The African team did not ar­rive in Gibral­tar in time for the start of the match.

An­oth­er three-time win­ner, Aus­tralia, over­whelmed North­ern Ire­land 75-15 in Group B while Scot­land pipped Samoa, 51-49.

Wales pre­vailed over Ton­ga 58-48 in Pool C while Eng­land's win, by de­fault, over Sri Lan­ka, who like Zam­bia, were not in Gibral­tar in time for the en­counter.

T&T will be back in ac­tion to­day and will seek to re­bound against Malawi. That match is set for 11 am (TT time). The Bar­ba­di­ans will al­so seek a first win when they face Fi­ji al­so at the same time.

Ja­maica, who was sec­ond in 2000, will get their World Cup cam­paign against Ton­ga at 4 am while Wales will be hop­ing that Sri Lan­ka will be present to play. Gibral­tar and Malaysia clash at 6 am, the same time set for the match-up of Pa­cif­ic ri­vals New Zealand and Cook Is­lands.

At 1 pm, North­ern Ire­land will meet Scot­land and Aus­tralia is set to bat­tle Sin­ga­pore.

The top two teams in each pool will ad­vance to the quar­ter­fi­nal round with the semi­fi­nals set for Sep­tem­ber 26 and the fi­nals on Sep­tem­ber 28.

Sat­ur­day's Day one re­sults

Fi­ji 53 vs T&T 40

Cook Is­lands 47 vs Gibral­tar 29

New Zealand vs Zam­bia (for­feit)

Aus­tralia 75 vs North­ern Ire­land

Samoa 49 vs Scot­land 51

Eng­land vs Sri Lan­ka (for­feit)

Wales 58 vs Ton­ga 40

South Africa 102 vs Bar­ba­dos 27

Match­es

Sun­day - Day Two

4 am - Ja­maica vs Ton­ga/Sri Lan­ka vs Wales

6 am - Gibral­tar vs Malaysia/New Zealand vs Cook Is­lands

11 am - Malawi vs T&T/Fi­ji vs Bar­ba­dos

1 pm - North Ire­land vs Scot­land/Aus­tralia vs Sin­ga­pore

Mon­day - Day Three

4 am - Fi­ji vs Malawi/T&T vs South Africa

6 am - Sina­pore vs Samoa/Aus­tralia vs Scot­land

11 am - Gibral­tar vs Zam­bia/Cook Is­lands/Malaysia

1 pm - Eng­land vs Wales/Sri Lan­ka vs Ja­maica