SOUTH Africa’s coach Elize Kotze says although Jamaica hold a higher rank in world netball, they are here to compete and hopefully, beat the No 4-ranked Jamaicans and improve their world rating.

The Jamaicans defeated South Africa at the World Championship last year in Singapore and at the FastNet Series last November in England, and Kotze believes if they are to be on par with the top four teams in the world, they need competitive games against the likes of the Sunshine Girls.

“This is the way we needed to move to compete against the top four in the world… We have a lot of respect for the Jamaicans and their athleticism and so we’re looking forward to play…,” she said, adding that they will be trying to make use of their advantages.

“Certainly, the height advantage that we have with our girls, we will be trying to utilise… We have most definitely done our homework, and we have analysed the Jamaican side and know that there are a few new caps that we don’t have any information about, but the South Africans are here to really compete,” she declared.

Kotze, who has been in charge of the team for just over a year, said her team has a good balance of experience and youth and has improved rapidly since losing to Jamaica late last year

“It’s a wonderful mix of experience and youth and we have eight of our World Cup players and a strong group of club players, and I think we have a really balanced side… I only started coaching them over a year ago and I can see the improvement and the confidence has grown,” she added.

She said a good result against the Jamaicans will not only boost confidence, but also improve their ranking.

“We have to start competing against teams to give us tougher challenges, so this series is not going to be easy and we know the Jamaicans are very good competitors and are a very proud nation, so we’re really coming here to do our best,” she said.

“It will also make a huge difference in our ranking, because when we placed sixth at the World Championships, it did have an influence on our world ranking, but we’ve not have much opportunities and did not play that much games (since last played Jamaica), so this will definitely be a crucial series for us,” she stated.

“We have our preparation and we know what we have to do… but we are a nation of good height… and it is very interesting to see the statistics of the overall height of the Jamaicans, which is 1.78, and for the South Africans it’s 1.77, so one-on-one situations are what we’ll need to try and win games,” she said.

Meanwhile, captain Amanda Mayhardt said it is always a difficult challenge playing a higher-ranked team

“We want to go in and put up a good performance against a team higher ranked than us. We know some of the Jamaican players, but we also know that they are a kind of a young, new team and some of the girls at FastNet might be in the team now.

“Also, some of the players we played against at the World Championship (will be in the team), but we don’t know them all,” she said.

“You can expect that our team has prepared well and we’re here on a mission and want to do well, so we’re looking forward to putting up a good performance because this our third international for the year and we’re all hungry to play good netball,” she said.