Netball head identifies the pathway

President of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Netball Association, Godfrey Harry, is assuring the Vincentian public that his Executive is putting things in place to bring Netball back to the lofty heights it once attained.{{more}}

Harry’s assurance is against the national senior team’s fifth place out of six in the Americas Federation of Netball Associations (AFNA) qualifiers which were held in St. Lucia last month.

Harry told SEARCHLIGHT: “The weaknesses of the team have been identified and the Association will definitely be making an effort to address them and make this national unit a challenging one within the region.”

In the recent tournament, St. Vincent and the Grenadines was beaten by Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, USA and St. Lucia. Their only win was against Canada.

Harry, who had a court side view of the players’ technical and tactical abilities in the tournament, as he was the Coach of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines team, thought the inexperience of his charges was a defining factor in the final outcome of the team’s performance.

There were five newcomers in the national senior team on the St. Lucia outing.

But an optimistic Harry thought: “The youthfulness of the team, and if these players make themselves available to the national team and given their ages, will give the coaches time to develop them as a unit, once they stay together”.

But despite the failure of his team to get a qualification spot to the 2011 World Netball Championships in Singapore next year, St. Vincent and the Grenadines was able to return to the IFNA Rankings.

After being out of a ranking because of lack of involvement in sufficient top level Netball for the past three years, this country was demoted to the second table.

However, with five matches played in St. Lucia and against two teams ranked above them, St. Vincent and the Grenadines is now number 20 among the ranked 24 Netball nations.

But despite being fourth among the four Caribbean teams behind Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and St. Lucia, Harry said: “This group of players’ ability will help to improve the present ranking from 20th to a projection of about 10th, once the attitude is positive.”

“Once finance becomes available, we will try to build the team with a good blend of youth and experience,” the first male Netball President added.

Harry said that while attention will be paid to the senior team in terms of the rankings, the age group teams and the development strategies will parallel this, in order to keep producing good players and ensure continuity. (RT)