Jamaica’s Sunshine Girls arrived from the Fast5 Netball World Series on Tuesday after ending the series in fifth position.

It’s the lowest position for the team since the shorter, faster version of the game was introduced in 2009 with Fast Net and now Fast5. Jamaica finished second in the inaugural year and fourth in subsequent years.

The series was played last Saturday and Sunday in Melbourne, Australia.

New Zealand won the series this year for the fourth straight time and the sixth time overall.

The six-team series ended as follows: New Zealand, Australia, Malawi (best position ever), England, Jamaica and South Africa.

Jamaica won two of the six matches played after defeating South Africa twice. They defeated South Africa 35-32 in the first match and 34-33 in their final match to cop fifth position ahead of South Africa. The Sunshine Girls lost to Australia 19-35; lost to Malawi 12-46; lost to New Zealand 16-26 and England 19-32.

Captain Althea Byfield said that the series was not a walkover, as all the teams came ready for tough competition and the other teams earned their places ahead of Jamaica. She said that the team was negatively affected by the absence of tall shooters Romelda Aiken and Jhaniele Reid, who would have made all the difference in the overall result of the matches. She made special mention of Malawi, who stepped up to their game to leapfrog England and Jamaica and take third position

Byfield indicated that at the end of the day she was pleased with how her team played in the face of the strong competition.

Coach Connie Francis said that the tour was challenging and the team had to dig deep in order to take on the competition, especially since the best shooters were not available. She said that she had some players who were new to international competition, and this added to the challenge. The coach, however, said that she was proud of the team’s performance as all 10 players did their best, and that the country needs to play the Fast5 format of the sport here in order to get a better outcome.

President of Netball Jamaica, Dr Paula Daley-Morris, said that the results and overall placement was disappointing, but that the country has to accept it and seek to get back to better days. One of the strategies is to play the Fast5 format in Jamaica in order to get better at it. She agreed with captain Byfield that Jamaica was negatively affected by the absence of its better shooters in Aiken and Fowler-Reid.

The 10-member squad included two new players to national representation in shooter Gezelle Allison and centre court player Trishana Hanson. The other players were shooters Anna-Kay Griffiths, Shantal Slater and Vanessa Walker; defenders, former captain Nicole Aiken-Pinnock, Kasey Evering and Vangelee Williams, as well as centre court player Nicole Dixon.