2025 Sunshine Series – Jamaica v South Africa (Jan)

It’s hard to watch with no stats and the commentators mostly ignoring the names of SA. There aren’t many close ups and the feed is blurry – but I’m thankful that netball pass is putting in the effort to show these things (no, I’m not sponsored by NP hahaha).

So Rhea-Dixon is at GA for Jamaica and Grierson is at WA. You can already see the English style of play especially with their baulks, stance, the way they step forward, the tracking on defence. It’s like when we saw the Corbins play for Barbados at NWC 2023 in Cape Town.

A bit of a three-way collision with SA GD munched (she’s okay), but the commentators don’t even know her name, would be helpful to have a graphic (the only graphic is the score). And now an awesome intercept (for a poorly chosen rushed pass from Grierson) from the SA GK and her name not mentioned.

SA ARE in it, cute layup from van der Berg there, I’m a bit surprised given their relative inexperience and the power the Sunshine Girls have shown this year.

Q3 42-35 Jam lead SA.

Sadly we see the injured SA GK with her right arm in a sling (name not mentioned); no word on what this injury is yet.

The SA WD was warned by Gary Burgess for repeated breaking (I have to say, I didn’t really notice an issue), so for that reason and also because they really do need to get the squad on and see what mix-ups might work, I’d hope they put KC from WA–>C, Etkesa (??) C–>WD, and try another feeder. KC and Maseko are playing well together, they might try different timing and options.

Q4 Jamaica came out explosively and quickly got to a 12 goal lead.

SA have a new GA which is definitely Taljaard (who I’ve always liked but Maskeo is just so good nowadays) (and Taljaard has a new name ?married or something else?) and new WD who I recognise but can’t recall the name.

Lots of errors in the SA forward line, the Jam crowd love it. But then the errors from Jam at the transverse line – Jok doesn’t move in the same way as Romela and JFN, and Jamaica are rushing the lob when it is covered and Jok is flat-footed. The big message is going to be to get the ball to the circle edge; or indeed for Kadijah Williams to watch every video of Toeava playing and how she gets rid of tall defenders. Grierson and Plummer aren’t doing too bad, but also not impressive.

I’d have to say, the SA shooters largely aren’t too stressed about the Jamaican defence of the shot – they do baulk, but they don’t panic. Streutker in particular had good accuracy.

Jam have recognised the sloppy patch and replaced GA and C. I’m sorry I haven’t written all the changes, without graphics it’s hard to keep track. Oooh Simone Gordon has just debuted at GS for Jam for the last 4 mins.

It looks like SA might win the last quarter. Jamaica are playing like they’ve already won, foot is off the pedal. Sure, some good defence by SA but nothing major, they’re playing more consistently and in the right place, right time.

Jenny van Dyk (coach of SA) – my impression from what she said, that Smith’s injury caused a loss of focus but wasn’t a major factor; she’s happy the gap was less than recent losses to Jam (18 goals or so); she felt like they were competitive (true), and they will improve simply through more experience.

Saher-Gaye Henry (coach of Jam) basically said precisely what I wrote hahahaha I’ve always liked her. I don’t only say that to be cute, I have interviewed her a couple of times (eg Gold Coast Comm Games) and we’re often on the same wavelength, maybe because we’re both wing attacks.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 4 days ago by Andrew Kennedy.
• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 4 days ago by Andrew Kennedy.

Looks like it was wrist for Smith. She put her hands down to break her fall and that arm took quite a jolt.