KADIE-ANN Dehaney, who plays goal defence for Jamaica’s senior netball team, has nothing but admiration for outgoing Head Coach Connie Francis.

Despite her respect for the iconic Francis, Dehaney remains committed to play her part in growing the sport and looks forward to working with the coach’s successor.

The 54-year-old Francis, whose contract expired on September 4 (which will not be renewed), is without a doubt Jamaica’s most successful netball coach, having led the Sunshine Girls to a number of major victories during various spells as the senior team boss.

Francis’s most recent tenure as Sunshine Girls head coach began in October 2019, following the team’s poor fifth-place result in the Netball World Cup in Liverpool, England, that summer. Since then the Sunshine Girls have made remarkable progress. At the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, they earned a historic silver medal.

Francis, a former standout national player, has yet to comment publicly on her coaching plans.

“I think she [Connie Francis] wants something different. I think she’s done it. She has done it as a player and she has now done it as a coach,” Dehaney told the Jamaica Observer.

“She has been in the history book now to be the first coach to bring a team to the grand final in the Commonwealth Games. She’s the coach that sits on the bench for us when we beat Australia in the group stage so I think she wants something different and to experience a lot more than netball, probably.

“I don’t know; [maybe she will] coach another team but I don’t know what she will do in the future. But, I sense something — that she wants to do something different. Everybody wish[es] her all the best in that wherever she might go, or whatever [it is that she will go on] to, [she will] accomplish great things in whatever she’s going to do. Yeah, I look forward to work with whoever gets in the role,” Dehaney further said.

Francis was a player in five World Netball Championships, from 1986 and 2003, before becoming head coach in 2007. That year she guided the Sunshine Girls to World Cup bronze in Auckland, New Zealand. The Sunshine Girls also finished second in the inaugural Fast Net Series in England in 2009.

And more recently Francis steered Jamaica to third place at the 2023 Netball World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa. It ended the country’s 16-year wait for a medal at the global showpiece.

“I think she’s very passionate; everybody would definitely describe her as a very passionate person. She is very driven and she loves the sport. She is willing to do whatever it takes to get us over that line,” Dehaney said.

Breaking the Sunshine Girls’ 16-year drought of not medalling at a World Cup was a historic occasion, according to Dehaney.

“The aim was to medal. Unfortunately we fell short because we wanted the gold but we were glad that we ended the drought on the island so to secure the bronze medal was amazing.

“There were 16 teams who competed and 13 of them did not medal so I’m delighted we were one of them that did. We’re just excited, and we’re pleased to be contributing to our future successes such as a Commonwealth silver medal — which is history — and we’ve secured another piece of history because we haven’t medalled in a long time. “It was very exciting, and we loved it,” Dehaney said.