The 12-member Sunshine Girls squad returned from New Zealand yesterday, where they lost all three Test matches which were played on September 11, 14 and 17.

The scores in the matches were 34-72, 38-61 and 38-66, respectively.

Head Coach Minneth Reynolds said that she was not disappointed with the results as “New Zealand played professional netball and we don’t. We took eight girls who did not go with us to the last World Championship so I think that they performed creditably; could have been better but as I said, it’s work in progress, so we have a lot of things to work on and we can only get better with continued international exposure.”

Reynolds identified one thing that can be done to make the team better. She said “more intensity in our training programme because the intensity that New Zealand displayed, we weren’t as good as them in that area, and our movements on and off the ball as well and limit our turnovers”.

According to Reynolds, the Sunshine Girls will take two weeks off to rest and then get back to training for the upcoming Fast Net series in England.

Captain Malysha Kelly said: “Well it was a tough series. I gained a lot of experience in terms of captaining a young team. I could see where the games got better each time we played, but in each game you saw inconsistency. With the new rules that we have where there is no timeout, you could see where they used their experience to their advantage, but you could see during the timeout when we get to speak to our coaches and get different instructions, you could see where it worked.”

Kelly identified communication as the most important thing to work on during training as well as “a little more consistency, getting practice on a similar surface to what we are going to be on”.

Netball Jamaica president Dr Paula Daley-Morris said: “I feel really good about it. I think that the team that we took there showed us that we have some players who are fit for international competition. Yes, we have a lot of work to do in terms of getting ready for a World Champs or so, but in terms of the talent that we saw on display, we are very pleased.”

Daley-Morris added: “Well, if we are able to get our full team to travel with us when we do these tours the scores would have been better. We did not go with any of our regular shooters, that would have impacted our shooting line-up. I think that the shooting line-up that we took, we must commend them for their effort.” She also said that going forward to play series like these, we need to have our full arsenal in place so that we can compete with the best.

The squad was a mix of current, returning and new players. The current players were Shanice Beckford, Nicole Dixon, Stacian Facey and vice captain Vangelee Williams, who represented Jamaica in last year’s Netball World Cup. The returning players were captain Malysha Kellly, Shantal Slater, Shamera Sterling, Adean Thomas and Vanessa Walker, while the new players were Kerry-Ann Brown, Rebekah Robinson and Under-21 player Abbeygail Linton.

The management team was headed by Dr Paula Daley-Morris; Cora Ricketts, team manager; Jacqueline Robotham, performance analyst, and Karen Parker, physiotherapist.

Best Dressed Chicken is the Sunshine Girls’ team sponsor.