Barbados inch closer to World Cup qualification

AS THE Americas Netball World Cup qualifiers continues inside the National Indoor Sports Centre, Barbados, after getting past a game St Vincent and the Grenadines, 57-36 to notch their fifth win of the competition, are almost certainly one of the two teams to make the World Cup.

Barbados coach, Margaret Cutting, was pleased with the performance of her charges to date.

“I am pleased. They are doing great. After the two games today, you can say that we have already qualified,” she said.

The game was close at the beginning with Barbados ending the quarter leading, 12-10. The second was just as tight, the half ending 25-20.

But then Babados’ quality began to shine through as they stormed the third quarter to lead 43-26.

Earlier in the day, Barbados had got by Grenada 60-38. The results give Barbados 10 points, making it very difficult for more than one team to overhaul their total heading into the final three games of the competition.

In the meantime, Sunshine Girls coach Connie Francis continues to express concerns over her charges’ tendency to go flat towards the back end of games.

On Tuesday, she seemed to have got over a fourth-quarter issue, but yesterday, the issue rared its head again, this time in the third quarter.

The game, in particular, was a comprehensive 74-38 win over Grenada.

The Jamaicans, who defeated Antigua and Barbuda 80-23 in the morning session, faced a resilient Grenada team and gave up the third quarter 15-11.

“The girls went away from the game plan. The game plan wasn’t to double team but to stiffle the midcourt.

“But young players will go away from the game plan, so it is good we could have capitalised on the fourth quarter,” she commented.

“It wasn’t pleasing. I didn’t like the third quarter. The senior team and now this young team tend to go flat, especially in a third quarter, and I thought we fixed it.

“So I thought we would have handled it a little better. Today, we lost the third quarter, so we are going to see where we went wrong. Tomorrow (today) we will come back tactically to fix some of the issues. So it’s coming back harder and trying to fix it,” said Francis.

The first quarter was keenly contested, and the Jamaicans had to work to take an 18-13 advantage.

The home team started to show their quality during the second quarter, although the Grenadians still tried to make it difficult.

Jamaica took the quarter 26-10 for a 44-23 lead at half time.

The substition of Jhaniele Fowler saw a dip in the effectiveness of the Sunshine Girls, and they lost the period 15-11 although they led comfortably 44-38 at its end.

Fowler would return to the line-up for the last quarter and pilot the Jamaicans to a 36-point victory.

Francis added that despite the team’s struggles to score without Fowler last night, she pointed to previous occasions to prove they could cope without the captain leading the attack.

“We played this morning without her (Fowler) and put in some good numbers. The game yesterday (Tuesday) she didn’t play as much either.”

livingston.scott@gleanerjm.com

Additional results

Morning Session

Jamaica 80 - Antigua & Barbuda 23

USA 46 - St Lucia 36.

Grenada 38 - Barbados 60

T&T 60 - Cayman 21

Evening session

Barbados 57 - St Vincent and Grenadines 36

Jamaica 74 v Grenada 48

T&T - USA (Results not available up to press time)

Antigua v Cayman (Results not available up to press time)

Today’s games

Jamaica v St Lucia

St Vincent and Grenadines v Antigua and Barbuda

Trinidad v Barbados

United States v Cayman