Nigel Si­mon

Min­is­ter of Sport, Brent San­cho has vowed to give the sport of net­ball his full sup­port with the hope of es­tab­lish­ing a Pro­fes­sion­al League and new home for the sport.

San­cho, was speak­ing at a wel­come re­cep­tion he host­ed at his Aber­crom­bry Street head of­fice, yes­ter­day to wel­come and ho­n­our the Ca­lyp­so Girls home from the 14th Net­ball World Cup which end­ed in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia on Sun­day.

T&T, which en­tered the 16-team tour­na­ment ranked tenth dropped its first two match­es of the tour­na­ment to even­tu­al cham­pi­ons and top ranked Aus­tralia (73-32) and sec­ond ranked team and run­ners-ups New Zealand (74-38) be­fore spank­ing Bar­ba­dos (55-39) for a 1-2 Pool A record.

In the sec­ond round for teams ninth to 16th, T&T the swept past Zam­bia (66-39), Sin­ga­pore (75-32), Samoa (67-47) for a 3-0 record in Pool G be­fore beat­ing Scot­land 57-56 in over­time in their ninth to 12th semi­fi­nal fol­lowed by a 64-51 de­feat of Samoa in the ninth spot play­off.

Speak­ing at his of­fice, San­cho, a for­mer So­ca War­riors World Cup de­fend­er first con­grat­u­lat­ed the mem­bers of the Ca­lyp­so Girls and its tech­ni­cal staff head­ed by coach Wes­ley "Pepe" Gomes and T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Dr Pa­tri­cia Butch­er for do­ing T&T proud on the world stage.

Re­flect­ing on the team's dif­fi­cult plight to get to the World Cup, San­cho said, "I re­mem­bered when I first came in­to of­fice and I had a meet­ing with Dr Butch­er and a two oth­er mem­bers of the team and they ex­pressed to me the ur­gency to get fund­ing for the women's na­tion­al team for prepa­ra­tion camps and tours, and then fund­ing for go­ing to the tour­na­ment.

He added, "What I saw in Dr Butch­er was a per­son who was dri­ven and had a lot of pas­sion for the sport and for the young peo­ple to achieve and what I saw in the play­ers was my­self, un­der­stand­ing what prop­er prepa­ra­tion brings and lit­tle did they knew while they were speak­ing I was lit­er­al­ly sign­ing the cheque un­der the ta­ble."

"I know the im­por­tance of prop­er prepa­ra­tion and I know al­so the im­por­tance of net­ball to this coun­try and the rich his­to­ry we have in this sport and I know for a fact be­cause of fund­ing be­ing a chal­lenge for net­ball we would have con­tin­ued on the light we were trav­el­ling be­fore.

"But I want to state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly on be­half of the Min­istry of Sport and by ex­ten­sion the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T that we will con­tin­ue to fund this team, and we will con­tin­ue to aid and as­sist this team in their de­vel­op­ment

"I have pre­dict­ed in the next two years that women in sports will be the next big thing, I have seen the evo­lu­tion of the first ever Women's Pre­mier League' (foot­ball) and the suc­cess it would have had and I can see a sim­i­lar feat for net­ball with re­gards to a do­mes­tic league

How­ev­er, cor­po­rate T&T needs to stand up and re­alise what is hap­pen­ing in our coun­try and need to step up to the plate," stat­ed San­cho.

"It is not on­ly the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of of the Gov­ern­ment of this coun­try to con­tribute to our young ath­letes, but cor­po­rate T&T has to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in al­so shap­ing and mould­ing our stars of the fu­ture.

"This Min­istry would have spent and ex­or­bi­tant of mon­ey in sport and as Dr Butch­er would have point­ed out it's still not in com­par­i­son to oth­er coun­tries that the team played against so we need as­sis­tance from cor­po­rate T&T to make much of your goals a re­al­i­ty.

"You all are not far from be­ing world cham­pi­ons again. I have watched the re­sults and looked at some of the match­es, and even against some of the top teams, de­spite what I will con­sid­er mediocre prepa­ra­tion for the stan­dard you should be you still had very com­mend­able per­for­mance and in some in­stance, it was very un­for­tu­nate you did not turn out to have more pos­i­tive re­sults.

So I say to you please keep on the course that you are chart­ing on. I am very much aware that most of you work and still train at the same time and the lack of fa­cil­i­ties that we have as it re­lates to net­ball and its some­thing we at the Min­istry is look­ing at and I can tell you, by the next time you are prepar­ing for a World Cham­pi­onship event, you will have a brand new court to play on.

A sup­port­ive San­cho in his fi­nal words to the play­ers said, "Con­tin­ue on the all hard work, it has not gone un­no­ticed and we will con­tin­ue to con­tribute even if I my­self has to get out there with Dr Butch­er and get cor­po­rate T&T be­hind you."

"We have the tal­ent here and I tru­ly be­lieve, par­tic­u­lar­ly in women sport that your year is around the cor­ner. I'm see­ing it in track and field, and oth­er sports that women are do­ing a tremen­dous job.

"We have some tal­ent­ed young women in this coun­try and they are not too far away from achiev­ing the goals that they set out to achieve, " end­ed the for­mer Eng­land-based foot­baller.