I really want to believe in these Sunshine Girls. I want to invest some emotions in them. But I can’t. They don’t allow me to with the regular meltdowns in consolation play-offs at international championships.

It’s almost like clockwork, they get to the semi-finals and lose to either New Zealand or Australia, and depending on their mood they lose to England in the third-place play-offs.

It’s not about losing — that’s part of the game, it’s how they lose. England is not 22 goals better than Jamaica. How do you justify losing your last two matches by a combined 33 goals?!

A bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games in Scotland last year, and at the Fast5 a year earlier in 2013 whetted our appetites for

more medals, but the Sunshine Girls looked spent and limped home after the first round was completed.

The numbers make for brutal reading: They lost to NZ, beat 14th-ranked Uganda by eight goals, then just got home ahead of Malawi by a single goal to qualify for the semi-finals.

The carnage really started in the last four when the Sunshine Girls were outplayed and lost to Australia by 11 goals in the semi-final game. Then came the diabolical meltdown in the third place play-offs.

From my point of view there are three distinct strata in world netball: New Zealand and Australia are the global powers, then Jamaica and England, and just a bit further back is South Africa, then the rest of the world.

They might have to make space for the ever-improving Malawi who are always dangerous and looks likely to break into the top four soon, and it might be at our expense.

I am no netball expert I don’t even know most of the rules in the game. I have no clue what tossing is or contact, but know enough to know that Netball Jamaica has a lot of work to do and they must start now.

And because I am not an expert, I have listened to those who know, and, surprisingly, my conclusions were not that far off. I have also learned that we depended way too much on the lone superstar player Romelda Aiken, they did not take the right players (every team that loses gets blamed for that though), and that our bench was weak, and when substitutions were made the performance fell way off.

Netball Jamaica must pay serious attention to spreading the game across the length and breadth of the country if there is to be serious development at the grass-roots level.

Netball is the only popular sport that does not have a national grass-roots system,

and there appears to be an overdependence on the high school system run by ISSA to produce players.

If it is that they chose to wait for the PE teachers and coaches in the schools to find the players, then there must be leagues at the parish levels to help develop the players.

Not so long ago, St James had a three-tiered league system — junior, intermediate and senior leagues — but despite this, there were little, if any, development going on; and while top-quality players were produced, it was mainly thanks to the schools’ system, not the club and by extension Netball Jamaica.

The focus, and sponsorship money, would appear to be concentrated in the Kingston and St Andrew region, while there are leagues in Clarendon and Manchester, but there are more parishes in the island without properly structured leagues, if any at all, than those who have leagues.

The mandate now must be for Netball Jamaica to develop the game across the entire island, in St Thomas, Portland, St Mary. They must have more seminars for umpire and other officials because that’s the only way the game can grow and, by extension, there will be better national teams.

Unlike football and even basketball, true global games where Jamaican federations can go hunting for expatriate players, netball must develop their own if they are to continue to produce top-quality players and continue their development.