Nigel Si­mon

For­mer world cham­pi­ons, the T&T "Ca­lyp­so Net­ballers" will come up against the top two teams in the world, host Aus­tralia and New Zealand in Pool A round-robin play at next year's 14th Net­ball World Cup in Syd­ney Aus­tralia, from Au­gust 7-16.

This will be the sec­ond time that the World Cham­pi­onships are be­ing held in Syd­ney, and the third time in Aus­tralia. Syd­ney last host­ed the event in 1991, when Aus­tralia won a close­ly con­test­ed fi­nal against New Zealand.

All match­es will be played at the 21,000 seat All­phones Are­na (for­mer­ly known as the Syd­ney Su­per­Dome and Ac­er Are­na), Syd­ney Olympic Park.

T&T who won the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (AF­NA) world ti­tle back in 1979 as joint win­ners with the Aussies and New Zealand will al­so go head-to-head with Caribbean ri­vals Bar­ba­dos, who they have beat­en in their last three meet­ings.

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.

Aus­tralia qual­i­fied au­to­mat­i­cal­ly as host along with the next five high­est ranked teams from the 2011 Cham­pi­onship in­clu­sive of New Zealand, Eng­land, Ja­maica, Malawi and South Africa.

The oth­er 11 teams qual­i­fied via their re­gion­al qual­i­fy­ing com­pe­ti­tions, with T&T top­ping Bar­ba­dos in the AF­NA qual­i­fiers which were held in Al­ber­ta, Cana­da, in Au­gust.

The Aus­tralians are the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons hav­ing won the ti­tle for a record tenth three years ago while sec­ond-ranked New Zealand have cap­tured the top prize on four ocas­sions, the last be­ing in 2002 while it has end­ed in sec­ond spot no few­er than sev­en times, in­clud­ing the last two edi­tions.

Aus­tralia is al­so the reign­ing Com­mon­wealth Games gold medal win­ners af­ter beat­ing ma­jor ri­val New Zealand in the fi­nal ear­li­er this year, 58-40.

It will be the sec­ond straight time the Pepe Gomes coached T&T women will face New Zealand in the group stages, hav­ing gone un­der to the Ki­wis, 23-75 in 2007 while beat­ing Wales (51-48) and Fi­ji (58-40) at the Sin­ga­pore Na­tion­al Sta­di­um.

The "Ca­lyp­so Net­ballers" were then up­staged by Ja­maica 42-79 in the quar­ter­fi­nals and al­so went un­der to Malawi, 38-61 in their fifth to eight place semi­fi­nal ahead of its 56-38 beat­ing of North­ern Ire­land for sev­enth spot in the 16-team tour­na­ment.

But de­spite the tough draw, T&T coach Wes­ley "Pepe" Gomes said he was quite hap­py with the op­po­nents his team would face.

"My aim is for us to fin­ish among the top six and if you want to be among the best you have to beat the best teams in the world.

"They have been the top teams in the world for a while now but we have been prepar­ing as hard as we can."

Cur­rent­ly, Gomes has a core of play­ers in train­ing and with the World Cham­pi­onships set for Ju­ly he is hop­ing to get in some in­ter­na­tion­al match­es and pos­si­bly two over­seas tours.

"We know things are tough when it comes to fi­nan­cial sup­port, but we are look­ing at some match­es in Eu­rope against Wales, Scot­land and Ire­land in ear­ly May and then some against the Ja­maicans just be­fore we head to Aus­tralia," Gomes said.

"Our plans were to play some match­es against Bar­ba­dos but with us be­ing drawn in the same pool and beat­ing them on the last three to four times we have played each oth­er, I don't think they will agree to it this time around."

Last night the T&T women con­tin­ued train­ing with an­oth­er ses­sion at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Mu­cu­rapo and de­pend­ing on the avail­abil­i­ty of the venue will train again to­mor­row morn­ing or Mon­day af­ter­noon from 6 pm to 8 pm to close out be­fore the Christ­mas.

Gomes added: "The girls have been re­al­ly com­mit­ted to train­ing but we are still hav­ing some is­sues in get­ting the fa­cil­i­ties to train as much as we would hope for.

"Since our re­turn from the AF­NA Cham­pi­onships in Al­ber­ta, Cana­da, where we won the ti­tle, the play­ers had a lit­tle break and have been train­ing since. They will get the break for the Christ­mas and then we re­sume or pro­gramme on Jan­u­ary 2, 2015."

The T&T coach al­so praised the younger play­ers who have been in train­ing for their ef­forts.

"There are a few young play­ers train­ing with us and even though they may not make the fi­nal team for the ma­jor tour­na­ments, train­ing with their se­nior peers will help them to pre­pare well for Un­der-21 tour­na­ments and I hope they take as much knowl­edge from the se­nior play­ers as pos­si­ble.

At the World Cham­pi­onship, the top two teams from each pre­lim­i­nary pool will qual­i­fy to the "first eight" sec­ond round se­ries while the bot­tom two teams in each pool will play in the "sec­ond eight" com­pe­ti­tion.

And at the end of the end of the first eight sec­ond round two groups, the top two in each qual­i­fy to the semi­fi­nals, the ther bot­tom two bat­tle for fifth to eight.

And the teams in the sec­ond eight groups will play round robin match, fol­lowed by crossover play­offs.

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Pre­lim­i­nary round groups:

Pool A: No 1 Aus­tralia, No 2 New Zealand, No 10 Bar­ba­dos, No 9 T&T

Pool B: No 3 Eng­land, No 4 Ja­maica, No 12 Scot­land, No 14 Samoa

Pool C: No 5 Malawi, No 6 South Africa, No 19 Sin­ga­pore, No 24 Sri Lan­ka

Pool D: No 7 Fi­ji, No 8 Wales, No 13 Ugan­da, No 18 Zam­bia

Qual­i­fi­ca­tion rounds:

First Eight:

Pool E: A-1, B-2, C-1, D-2

Pool F: A-2, B-1, C-2, D-1

NB: Top two teams from each pool qual­i­fy to the semi­fi­nals while the bot­tom two qual­i­fy to the fifth to eight play­offs.

Sec­ond Eight:

Pool G: A-3, B-4, C-3, D-4

Pool H: A-4, B-3, C-4, D-3

NB:

At the end of the sec­ond eight match­es, the teams will then face off in the play­off match­es for po­si­tions ninth to 16th.

Win­ner's row:

Year Host Plac­ing

1963 Eng­land 4th

1967 Aus­tralia 5th

1971 Ja­maica 4th

1975 New Zealand 4th

1979 T&T Joint 1st with Aus/NZ

1983 Sin­ga­pore 3rd

1987 Scot­land Joint 2nd

1991 Aus­tralia DNP

1995 Eng­land 6th

1999 New Zealand 8th

2003 Ja­maica 10th

2007 New Zealand 11

2011 Sin­ga­pore 7th

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