Shrugging off a thrashing

Head coach of the national senior team Sasher-Gaye Henry remains confident that the Sunshine Girls can rebound strongly and level their two-match Horizon Vitality Netball series against hosts England Roses when the teams clash at 9 a.m. Jamaica time today.

Jamaica trail the series 1-0 after being outclassed 80-37 by England at the Copper Box Arena yesterday. The Sunshine Girls are fielding a very inexperienced squad for the series due to the absences of seven star players, and they are now desperate for a game-levelling victory that would allow them to retain the competition’s trophy they won 2-1 last year.

Despite the heavy defeat, Henry has stayed upbeat, noting that the team can take valuable lessons from the opening encounter into today’s contest.

“I am hoping that whatever we have learnt from this game we can take that into the second game so that we can get a much better performance from the team,” said Henry.

“We have to play consistently for 60 minutes because we just didn’t do that and I think that whenever we get our opportunities we need to capitalise on them and ensure that we keep the scoreboard ticking over,” Henry said.

Not about the talk

She highlighted that that improvement must come through effort and consistency rather than words.

“It is not about the talk, it is about the work that you have to put in because I know that we can do it, but we have to be consistent and we have put in the work at both ends of the court in order for us to make this happen on Sunday,” Henry stated.

In Saturday’s loss, Simone Gordon came off the bench to top-score for the Sunshine Girls with 18 goals from 21 attempts. Gezelle Allison added 12 from 14, while captain Shanice Beckford was perfect, scoring seven from seven. England, however, asserted their dominance early and never relented, leading 39-18 at half-time and extending the advantage to 58-28 at the end of the third quarter.

Reflecting on the performance, Henry admitted the result did not reflect the team’s true capabilities.

“It was a poor performance from us because the score really didn’t reflect what we can do as a team as we didn’t play to our true potential. One of the things is that we lack consistency in terms of taking care of the ball,” Henry pointed out.

“We also lack timing in our decision making and we made some bad passes and we just didn’t take care of the ball,” she said.

“I think that England really capitalised on our mistakes and they made us suffer and they were really on their game on both ends of the court,” Henry underscored.