T&T netball team is in a precarious position of having limited time to prepare for a major tournament. The "Calypso Girls" will head to St Lucia in July for the Americas Federation of Netball Association (AFNA) qualifiers for the 2011 World Netball Championships, which is to be held in Singapore. Bridget Adams remains as the coach of the local unit and last week confessed that she is not at ease with the current situation. "We have not started training as yet. Honestly, I am disheartened that training have not started," said Adams, a former national player. T&T is presently ranked tenth in the world, the second highest of the Caribbean teams. Barbados is a spot behind in 11th place and St Vincent and the Grenadines is 17th.
Jamaica holds the top spot in the region and because of its No. 4 rating is already among the 16 teams that will compete in the finals. The top five teams, as per final results of the previous world tournament in 2007, qualify for next year's competition. Defending champion Australia, New Zealand, England and Malawi are the other countries that have booked their spots. Singapore qualifies as the host. This means that there are only ten available spots and they will be filled by the top two teams from five regions–Americas and Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Europe and Oceania. It has been a while since the T&T has trained (eight months to be exact when the senior netballers were preparing for the inaugural Caribbean Games) which was to be held here in T&T in July. The Games were eventually cancelled.
"I cannot say now how the team will do at this point because they have not been training," shared Adams. "I know some of the national players have been keeping active as they are playing in the (Courts) All Sectors Netball League but that is not enough. "Fitness is not good and they need to work on their co-ordination. They need work. "People are saying that the team has started training but this is not so. I am the coach of the UTT (University of T&T) netball team and we have been practising against national players. This cannot be considered national training," said Adams. The last time the "Calypso Girls" have had international competition was in 2008 when it competed in a Tri-Nation Series in Kingston, Jamaica.
The tournament featured host Jamaica and South Africa and the senior netballers did not win a match. Meanwhile, T&T by means of being ranked in the top 12 teams in the world has qualified for the Commonwealth Games set for October 3-14 in Delhi, India.