Trinidad and To­ba­go’s net­ballers, dubbed the "Ca­lyp­so Girls," were out­classed 81-22 by Caribbean ri­vals Ja­maica in their open­ing Pool B match at the Com­mon­wealth Games in Glas­gow, Scot­land, Sat­ur­day. The mar­gin of de­feat was just one goal short of equalling the "Reg­gae Girlz" biggest win over T&T.

​Play­ing in the penul­ti­mate match of the open­ing day of com­pe­ti­tion at The Hy­dro, the Car­lette Nurse-coached "Ca­lyp­so Girls" line-up led by vet­er­an duo Joelisa Coop­er and Afeisha Noel, were put un­der ear­ly pres­sure, trail­ing 24-5 at the end of the first 15-minute quar­ter.

​It was more of the same from the su­pe­ri­or Ja­maicans in the sec­ond quar­ter as they widened their lead to 43-12 at the half­time in­ter­val. Ace shoot­er Romel­da Aiken proved a hand­ful for the T&T de­fence, scor­ing 25 goals from 27 at­tempts be­fore be­ing sub­sti­tut­ed with just un­der five min­utes left in the pe­ri­od.

​At the start of the sec­ond half, Ja­maica’s goal-at­tack Shan­ice Beck­ford was al­so giv­en an ear­ly rest af­ter scor­ing a per­fect 16 from 16. How­ev­er, Ja­maica main­tained their dom­i­nance, with Azara Wilmot tak­ing up the man­tle to push their ad­van­tage to 60-20. De­spite the deficit, T&T en­joyed their best of­fen­sive out­put of the match with eight goals in the quar­ter to Ja­maica's 17, their low­est of the first three pe­ri­ods.

​The fi­nal quar­ter was com­plete­ly dom­i­nat­ed by Ja­maica on both ends of the court, outscor­ing T&T 21-2. Wilmot fin­ished with a match-high 33 goals from 41 at­tempts, while Rhea Dixon added sev­en goals from 11 at­tempts.

For T&T, Noel, 40, had a team-high 17 goals from 19 at­tempts, while Coop­er, 37, tal­lied five goals from sev­en at­tempts.

​Al­so in Pool B, Ugan­da de­feat­ed Wales 59-50, and New Zealand clob­bered Scot­land 74-44. In Pool A, Aus­tralia crushed Ton­ga 99-38, Eng­land out­classed North­ern Ire­land 83-44, and South Africa de­feat­ed Malawi 65-44.

​To­day, T&T faces Ugan­da at 2 pm, while New Zealand plays Ja­maica two hours lat­er. Wales and Scot­land will clash in the open­er at 4 am. In Pool A ac­tion, Aus­tralia plays Eng­land, Malawi meets North­ern Ire­land, and South Africa tack­les Ton­ga.

​Mean­while at the SEC Hall, T&T box­er Je­re­mi­ah Thomas was beat­en 5-0 on points by Ton­ga’s Josh Ton­go in their men’s 80kg round-of-32 bout. In the men's 62kg round-of-32, An­tho­ny Joseph lost by walkover to Namib­ia’s Trya­gain Morn­ing Nde­velo af­ter ar­riv­ing late for the en­counter.