SPORTS DESK

gm­sports@guardian.co.tt

T&T Ca­lyp­so Girls co-cap­tain Afeisha Noel says she is ex­pect­ing a tough chal­lenge in her team’s group match­es at the Vi­tal­i­ty Net­ball World in Cape Town, South Africa.

The tour­na­ment starts on Fri­day at Cape Town In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion Cen­tre Are­na 1 with for­mer cham­pi­ons, joint with Aus­tralia and New Zealand in 1979, T&T meet­ing the 2019 reign­ing cham­pi­ons New Zealand in both team's Pool D open­er be­fore fac­ing Sin­ga­pore the fol­low­ing day, and Ugan­da on Ju­ly 30 in their oth­er round-robin match­es.

Speak­ing ear­li­er this week, Noel said,“Play­ing Ugan­da and New Zealand in the 2022 Com­mon­wealth Games last year, and los­ing to them has re­al­ly giv­en me a dri­ve to want to do bet­ter,” she said.

“I have been play­ing and think­ing about strate­gies about how to im­prove or score against them.

“As for Sin­ga­pore, I haven’t played against them be­fore, so I'm not sure how the matchup will be but, be­ing hon­est, I am hyped and ex­cit­ed to see what the out­come will be.”

T&T coach Joel "Twig­gy" Young-Strong, a for­mer in­ter­na­tion­al um­pire ex­pressed her views about South Africa as host. She said, “This is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for Africa to have the World Cup staged at home be­cause, as every­one can see, African net­ball is on the rise.”

T&T knows all about the boost that host­ing the Net­ball World Cup can be for the home side – that fa­mous 1979 tour­na­ment hav­ing been held in Port of Spain.

“It is def­i­nite­ly a big boost to host any tour­na­ment on home soil. Imag­ine hav­ing tens of thou­sands of sup­port be­hind you. That in it­self is a great mo­ti­va­tion, and it en­cour­ages you as a team to put on a great show for your peo­ple,” she ex­plained.

Just three teams have lift­ed the Net­ball World Cup tro­phy in the tour­na­ment’s 60-year his­to­ry.

Two of them are pow­er­hous­es of the sport – Aus­tralia and New Zealand – but the third is a lit­tle less pre­dictable – T&T.

The tiny is­land na­tion boasts that unique dis­tinc­tion, hav­ing shared the ti­tle with Aus­tralia and New Zealand in 1979.

Back then the tour­na­ment was played over two round-robin group stages with no play­offs, and af­ter the three na­tions all fin­ished with eight wins and one loss, they were de­clared joint win­ners.

That lega­cy still lives on in the Caribbean team, with one of the mem­bers of that suc­cess­ful side, Peg­gy Cas­tana­da, still in­volved on the coach­ing side, help­ing out in the shoot­ing cir­cle.

Cas­tana­da knows a thing or two about shoot­ing as back in 1979 T&T o scored the most goals in the tour­na­ment with 658 to their name at an av­er­age of 54.8 per match.

“We have Ms Peg­gy Cas­tana­da com­ing in and as­sist­ing us in the shoot­ing de­part­ment and im­part­ing great knowl­edge to our shoot­ers,” ex­plained " Young-Strong.

She con­tin­ued, “It is al­ways a very hum­bling and proud mo­ment when you are re­mind­ed of this great ac­com­plish­ment [the 1979 vic­to­ry]. I be­lieve that it is not out of our reach again, but we have to start from the ground up and build dif­fer­ent and strong foun­da­tions. While get­ting their hands back on the tro­phy may be an un­re­al­is­tic aim at the Net­ball World Cup 2023."

Coach Young-Strong is tar­get­ing a rapid rise in the rank­ings. She said, "We hope to break back in­to the top 10 in a sig­nif­i­cant way. Just as Ton­ga came from nowhere and is sev­enth, we are tar­get­ing one of these ranked po­si­tions.”

Look­ing ahead to their match­es in Pool D Young-Strong ad­mit­ted it will be a tough bat­tle.

“It will be an up­hill bat­tle in this group. We are not tak­ing any team light­ly and we will take each game with a dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy,” said Young-Strong.