Nigel Si­mon

Dr Pa­tri­cia Butch­er, pres­i­dent of the T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNA) as well as the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tions (AF­NA) says for­mer world cham­pi­ons, T&T should tar­get a "Top Six" fin­ish at the up­com­ing 14th Net­ball World Cup in Syd­ney Aus­tralia, from Au­gust 7-16.

The "Ca­lyp­so Net­ballers" who won the world ti­tle in 1979 joint­ly with the Aus­tralia and New Zealand, will come up against the top two teams in the world, host Aus­tralia and New Zealand in Pool A as well as Caribbean ri­vals Bar­ba­dos in round-robin play. Dr Butch­er said the team should be aim­ing to im­prove on it sev­enth placed fin­ish from four years ago in Sin­ga­pore.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Dr Butch­er not­ed that the T&T team was now go­ing through a tran­si­tion­al stage with a few se­nior play­ers re­tir­ing over the past year, but at the same time saw know rea­son why the team can­not im­prove at this year's event.

She added, "We first need to be re­al­is­tic about where we are as a team and then our chances in the group, be­cause hav­ing to face Aus­tralia and New Zealand will not be an easy task in the group phase, while we ex­pect Bar­ba­dos be­ing our Caribbean ri­vals to be a very strong chal­lenge as well.

Pri­or to the World Cham­pi­onships, the "Ca­lyp­so Net­ballers", coached by Wes­ley "Pepe" Gomes will trav­el to Eng­land for a three-match se­ries against that coun­try from May 4 to 10th af­ter which they will trav­el to Belfast to com­pete as the Net­ball Eu­rope Open Cham­pi­onship from May 14–17 in North­ern Ire­land against the host, Scot­land, Wales, Eng­land and fel­low guest team South Africa.

Look­ing ahead to the two tours which will serve as the lo­cal women main World Cup prepa­ra­tions, Dr Butch­er said it will be a very im­por­tant for the team to gauge where they are in terms of readi­ness for Au­gust as we have tak­en the de­ci­sion not to go to Ja­maica for the fi­nal World Cup warm-up be­cause we feel that the match­es in Eu­rope will be of much more use to us as com­pared to on­ly fac­ing Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos.

Pool B of the 2015 Cham­pi­onship fea­tures world third and fourth ranked teams, Eng­land and Ja­maica as well as Scot­land and Samoa, while Malawi, South Africa, Sin­ga­pore and Sri Lan­ka com­prise Pool C, and the quar­tet of Fi­ji, Wales, Ugan­da and Zam­bia make up Pool D with the match­es card­ed for the 21,000 seat All­phones Are­na (for­mer­ly known as the Syd­ney Su­per­Dome and Ac­er Are­na), Syd­ney Olympic Park.

In terms of an over­all de­vel­op­ment plan for the sport lo­cal­ly, the lo­cal net­ball boss said very soon her as­so­ci­a­tion to­geth­er with the Min­istry of Sport and Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sportt) will be jump­ing off their youth pro­grammes.

"Our ob­jec­tive is to de­vel­op high cal­i­bre play­ers and we will be start­ing our pro­gramme for 5-12 years across eight com­mu­ni­ties short­ly.

"We have al­ready got­ten the sup­port of the Min­istry of Sport and Sportt with re­gards to cov­er­ing the salaries for our coach­es and of­fi­cials for the pro­gramme and this will be fol­lowed by sim­i­lar scout­ing and train­ing pro­grammes in the na­tion­al tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme for play­ers in the Un­der-16 and Un­der-19 age-groups across the coun­try.

Butch­er al­so said that for­mer na­tion­al play­ers Janelle Bark­er and Lystra Solomon-Simp­son are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing the na­tion­al Un­der-16 team for the up­com­ing Caribbean Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Jean Pierre Cham­pi­onship (Un­der-16) and the team is look­ing for­ward to do­ing much bet­ter than it did last year.

"We have tak­en a de­ci­sion to make use of the for­mer na­tion­al play­ers as a means of suc­ces­sion and since last Sep­tem­ber coach Bark­er and her as­sis­tant Solomon-Simp­son have been prepar­ing the team to the best of their abil­i­ty.

"There is al­so the World Youth (Un­der-21) Cham­pi­onship to come in the next cou­ple years and on com­ple­tion of the World Cham­pi­onship in Aus­tralia, se­nior team duo, Rhon­da John-Davis and Kem­ba Dun­can will be ded­i­cat­ing much more of their time to­wards prepar­ing that team as well, " end­ed Dr Butch­er.