Shaquan­da Greene-Noel, one of two lat­est T&T net­ball ex­port, has set­tled in well with the Celtic Drag­ons as they pre­pare for the up­com­ing sea­son of the Vi­tal­i­ty Net­ball Su­per League (VNSL) in Eng­land.

The na­tion­al de­fend­er ar­rived in Cardiff over the week­end and is al­ready cher­ish­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete among some of the best net­ballers in the world.

"It's been re­al­ly in­tense but I'm rel­ish­ing every mo­ment of it! I'm al­ready out to train­ing," Greene-Noel told Guardian Me­dia Sports fol­low­ing a prac­tice ses­sion on Tues­day evening. "It re­quires a lot of dis­ci­pline. On most days, we have three ses­sions and that's some­thing that's very new to me, but I'm al­ready men­tal­ly pre­pared for what's ahead!"

Greene-Noel has al­ready made an im­pact among the Drag­ons, the league’s on­ly Welsh rep­re­sen­ta­tive and the for­mer team of her na­tion­al cap­tain Kali­fa Mc­Collin.

She said, "Af­ter the first ses­sion, some of the girls vot­ed me as the per­son who in­spired them be­cause of my in­ten­si­ty and high en­er­gy, even though it was very chal­leng­ing phys­i­cal­ly for me.

"We have an awe­some group of play­ers who are ex­treme­ly com­pet­i­tive and just want to work as­sid­u­ous­ly. Most of us are new to the team so we're fo­cused on build­ing re­la­tion­ships."

 The sea­son is set to be­gin in Feb­ru­ary and Greene-Noel has al­ready set a per­son­al goal.

"I'm al­so fo­cused on work­ing in­ces­sant­ly to ce­ment my spot as a top de­fend­er in the league. It's tough, but my coach has stu­pen­dous coach­ing strate­gies and I'm go­ing to take as much as I can from her, to add to my game," said the for­mer stu­dent-ath­lete of the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT).

Lead­ing up to the VNSL sea­son which will see 11 teams bat­tling for the ti­tle held by the Lough­bor­ough Light­ning, Greene-Noel and her Drag­ons team­mates will com­pete in sev­er­al warm-up match­es.

"We have a friend­ly ver­sus Knights men's team next Thurs­day, then the Rise Again Fes­ti­val, De­cem­ber 11 and 12. A few more that haven't been an­nounced just yet as well," she said.

Last week­end, Greene-Noel's na­tion­al team­mate and fel­low de­fend­er Jameela Mc­Carthy, who will al­so be mak­ing her de­but at the Eng­lish League with the Sara­cens Mav­er­icks, par­tic­i­pat­ed in a friend­ly match against the Lon­don Gi­ants men's team at the Hert­ford­shire Sports Vil­lage.

The teams of T&T's de­fen­sive duo will clash on Feb­ru­ary 6, the sec­ond day of the new sea­son at the Re­sorts World Are­na in Birm­ing­ham.

Mc­Carthy made her de­but with the Mav­er­icks last week, start­ing off the pre­sea­son well, fin­ish­ing run­ners-up at the Fast5 Net­ball All-Stars tour­na­ment. They opened with a loss against Wasps (48-33) but fol­lowed up with vic­to­ries against the Light­ning (51-30) and Strath­clyde Sirens (20-17) be­fore elim­i­nat­ing Man­ches­ter Thun­der (27-11) in the se­mi-fi­nal. In the fi­nal, the Mav­er­icks fell to Team Bath, 23-17.