Confident Sunshine Girls hunt for Fast5 glory
Annett Daley, head coach for Jamaica’s senior netball team, says she is confident that the Sunshine Girls can create some damage at the 2023 Fast5 tournament as they open their campaign against Australia at the Christchurch Arena in New Zealand on Friday.
Game time is 6:30 pm (Jamaica Time).
The Fast5 tournament is played among the world’s top-ranked six teams (New Zealand, Australia, England, Jamaica, Uganda, and South Africa), featuring dynamic rule changes including five players a side, shorter quarters, power plays, and super shots.
Each side only has five players on the court, and each quarter lasts only six minutes. Breaks in-between quarters are two minutes each, and injury timeouts are 30 seconds only — standard rules allow for one initial two-minute injury timeout. Each team can separately nominate one “power play” quarter in which each goal scored by that team counts for double points. The two teams cannot designate the same quarter as their power play.
The Sunshine Girls will play in a round-robin format on day one, where each team plays three games, and on day two, they will play two games, before entering the play-off stage, where the Fast5 champion is expected to be crowned.
“We play Australia first, and this should be a very exciting game. They [Australia] have quick, excellent shooters and strong defenders, but I do believe our ladies have an equal chance of winning,” Daley told the Jamaica Observer.
“Winning depends on how tenacious they [Sunshine Girls] are in executing their skills, and I am pretty confident in them. They are excited and ready to go,” the head coach added.
The Sunshine Girls will then face Uganda at 9:30 pm (Jamaica time) before closing out day one of action against South Africa at 1:15 am. On day two of the competition, they will tackle England at 6:00 pm and New Zealand at 9:45 pm.
“We had one training session on Tuesday, and I can tell the ladies have worked really hard at their game. The training was about working through the jet lag. For the rest of training leading up to match time, I expect the same enthusiasm to do well,” Daley said.
SQUAD – Romelda Aiken-George, Gezelle Allison, Abigail Sutherland, Mischa Creary, Roxonna McLean, Amanda Pinkney, Crystal Plummer, Kimone Shaw, Theresa Beckford, and Tafiya Hunter.
