‘A poor performance’

National senior netball head coach Sasher-Gaye Henry said she is deeply disappointed and saddened by the Sunshine Girls’ poor showing against the England Roses in their two-match Vitality Series, which ended in a heavy defeat by the hosts yesterday.

The Sunshine Girls, who fielded a highly inexperienced team for the series due to the absence of seven senior players, were outclassed 82-31 in the second match at the Copper Box Arena in London, England. The Jamaicans trailed 38-16 at half-time and 60-25 at the end of the third stanza.

Jamaica also went down heavily in the opening encounter on Saturday, losing 80-37, as England swept the series with commanding performances on both days.

Henry, reflecting on yesterday’s defeat, did not hide her frustration with the overall display from her team as she outlined that they played poorly in both matches.

“It was really a poor performance from us in terms of our abilities,” said Henry. “It is a big loss and it is something that we are not pleased about, because we felt that we should have shown much more improvement. So definitely, as a group, we have to take accountability and go back to really push hard to improve on our performance.”

Henry noted that the series was always going to be challenging, especially with the experimentation required in a major tour, but she pointed out that the shortcomings were clearly exposed.

“We have to look back at the areas that we were really lacking in. We also have to look at our rotation in a major tour. The rotations were different and they were new; and we recognised our shortfalls and definitely have to go back and fix them heading into our next series,” Henry stated.

“I think that we didn’t capitalise today (Sunday) ... in terms of England’s errors. I think he had an increase in terms of our turnovers and we a decrease in our shooting attempts and it is something that we really need work on in terms of taking that ball into our shooters,” she said.

Despite the disappointing results, Henry stressed that the series also provided valuable learning experiences for a young group still finding its way at the international level.

“It is a young team and I know that they have not had that experience, and for that we just have to look at how we can build each player heading into our next series.

“There were a lot of positives that we can take from this second game, because we really started out much better than we did in the first match. We really held them up, but I think that we were not able to mentally and physically stay in the game.”

Henry stressed that structural discipline and decision-making are areas that need urgent attention going forward, and once these areas are addressed, then they can definitely return to winning ways.

“I think we still tend to not play in a structure, and England did that well. I think persons did not know when to drive and so the inexperience really showed, especially in our midcourt play, and we need to definitely improve on that,” she stressed.