LON­DON – Eng­land Ros­es wrapped up their Vi­tal­i­ty Net­ball Se­ries against Ja­maica’s Sun­shine Girls in em­phat­ic fash­ion by romp­ing to an 81-30 vic­to­ry in the fi­nal match at the Cop­per Box Are­na in Eng­land on Sun­day (De­cem­ber 14).

The win fol­lowed Sat­ur­day’s com­pre­hen­sive 80-37 win in the open­er and helped Eng­land ex­act re­venge af­ter Ja­maica won the in­au­gur­al se­ries last No­vem­ber 2-1.

With Ja­maica miss­ing sev­er­al key play­ers, Ros­es head coach Jess Thirl­by used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make some changes, giv­ing Em­ma Rayn­er her de­but while mov­ing star play­er Fun­mi Fado­ju from her usu­al po­si­tion of goal keep­er or goal de­fence to wing de­fence.

The Ros­es wast­ed lit­tle time in im­pos­ing their dom­i­nance on Ja­maica’s in­ex­pe­ri­enced team, open­ing up a 23-point ad­van­tage by half time be­fore even­tu­al­ly pulling away by adding 43 points in the sec­ond half.

De­spite the lop­sided vic­to­ry, Thirl­by was still full of praise for the Ja­maicans.

“I think they’re such a spir­it­ed team, they put every­thing out against us, start­ed re­al­ly well, and we re­al­ly re­spect any Ja­maican side.

“…So, yes, Ja­maica will be stronger again, both for hav­ing come here with some of their new tal­ent and for those play­ers that will re­turn,” Thirl­by said.

Mean­while, Sun­shine Girls head coach, Sash­er Gaye Hen­ry-Wright said the re­sult meant sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments had to be made go­ing for­ward.

“I think we were im­pa­tient in terms of every­body want­i­ng to move at the ball at the same time and not mak­ing those strong dri­ves and the cut and change di­rec­tion.

“We have to give cred­it to Eng­land…but I think we have to go back home, we have to look back at our train­ing, the phys­i­cal as­pect, the tac­ti­cal prepa­ra­tion,” Hen­ry-Wright said.

“I’m grate­ful for the ex­pe­ri­ence and the op­por­tu­ni­ty for the girls and for all of us, but we have a lot of home­work to do.”

CMC