T&T's Un­der-21 net­ballers fell to a hu­mil­i­at­ing 105-15 de­feat to South Africa in their third match at the Net­ball World Youth Cup (NWYC) at the Ter­cente­nary Sports Com­plex, Gibral­tar on Mon­day.

With the loss, the T&T team is win­less af­ter three match­es. The South Africans went up 15-0 be­fore the lo­cal play­ers found the net with six min­utes, 20 sec­onds left in the first quar­ter. The young "Ca­lyp­so Girls" strug­gled with the short pass and fast pace ap­proach of the African side and were down 26-7 at the first break. They were re­strict­ed to four goals in the sec­ond quar­ter, com­pared to the 24-goal con­ver­sions by the win­ners. T&T went in­to the half­time pe­ri­od well down, trail­ing 50-7.

The Maikea Bram­ble-skip­pered team were pegged by the op­po­si­tion's de­fend­ers and failed to get a goal in the third quar­ter as South Africa flowed with the ball to up by 70 goals (77-7) at the end of the third quar­ter.

T&T showed some fight in the last pe­ri­od of the match, pro­duc­ing eight goals to go up to 15 but their ri­vals were ruth­less, get­ting over the 100-goal bar­ri­er to take the match by 90 goals.

Bram­ble, as goal-shoot­er, net­ted all of 15 of T&T's goals from 16 at­tempts. Start­ing goal-at­tack Keiko Roy did not con­vert any of her three at­tempts while Ja­da Hamil­ton, who re­placed Roy in the sec­ond and third quar­ters, missed her two shots at goal.

T&T was beat­en by Fi­ji (53-40) on Sat­ur­day and Malawi (65-29) on Sun­day and were hop­ing to re­bound against South Africa to stay in con­tention of fin­ish­ing in the top two spots in Pool D and qual­i­fy for the quar­ter­fi­nals.

T&T will next play Caribbean neigh­bour Bar­ba­dos to­mor­row at 11 am (TT time). The Bar­ba­di­ans were beat­en by South Africa (102-27) on Sat­ur­day and had a rest day yes­ter­day. The red, white and black rep­re­sen­ta­tives got the bet­ter of Bar­ba­dos 59-33 the last time the two teams clashed at the World Youth Cup in 2009. How­ev­er, Bar­ba­dos edged T&T 45-44 in the Amer­i­c­as qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment for the NWYC in Guade­loupe in Ju­ly 2024.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from World Net­ball (WN), due to un­re­solved mat­ters sur­round­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Sri Lan­ka and Zam­bia in the Youth Cup, WN has with­drawn both teams for the re­main­der of the com­pe­ti­tion.

The re­main­ing sched­uled stage one pool games of the com­pe­ti­tion, where Sri Lan­ka and Zam­bia were due to play, will be treat­ed as for­feit­ed fix­tures and their op­po­si­tion will be award­ed with two points for the win in line with com­pe­ti­tion reg­u­la­tions.

Yes­ter­day's re­sults

Day Three

South Africa 105 vs T&T 15

Malawi 52 vs Fi­ji 51

Samoa 62 vs Sin­ga­pore 41

Aus­tralia 69 vs Scot­land 42

Cook Is­lands 66 vs Malaysia 44

Eng­land 65 vs Wales 28

Gibral­tar vs Zam­bia (for­feit)

Ja­maica vs Sri Lan­ka (for­feit)

SCHED­ULE

To­day - Day Four

4 am - Aus­tralia vs Samoa/Sin­ga­pore vs North­ern Ire­land

6 am - Ja­maica vs Wales/Eng­land vs Ton­ga

11 am - Trinidad and To­ba­go vs Bar­ba­dos/South Africa vs Malawi

1 pm - New Zealand vs Malaysia/Cook Is­lands/Zim­bab­we

To­mor­row - Day Five

4 am - Scot­land vs Sin­ga­pore/Samoa vs North­ern Ire­land

6 am - Ton­ga vs Sri Lan­ka/Ja­maica vs Eng­land

11 am - New Zealand vs Gibral­tar/Malaysia vs Zam­bia

1 pm - Fi­ji vs South Africa/Malawi vs Bar­ba­dos