Caption: The national netball team pose for a group photo in one of their friendly game series against the Sabah netball team on Saturday. Picture: Courtesy of BNA.
Ak Fauzi Pg Salleh
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN
THE national netball team had a good outing winning all three games in a friendly series against netball teams in Sabah over the weekend.
The Royal Bees kicked off their campaign on Friday with a 59-28 win over the Sabah state team at the Arena Futsal Yayasan Sabah in Kota Kinabalu.
They followed that up with a 50-25 victory over the same team on Saturday before beating Sabah Mixed team 47-21 yesterday.
National netball coach Thilaka Jinadasa was pleased with her charges' performances throughout the series.
"It was good to win games and it was a very good start for our season," said Jinadasa in an interview with Brusports yesterday.
"Most of the time our strategies worked well, but we still need to give more attention on working with our centre passes, with variety of strategy and looking for more different options.
"There were a few times that we got stuck in the centre court and we were running out of options. Also our shooters’ rotation was not effective enough and was easy for the opposition to read and anticipate their movement," she added.
"These are the few things that we still need to work on but nevertheless the friendly series was a very good outing for everyone on the team," continued the Sri Lankan.
Currently there are 17 players training in the team, with Her Royal Highness Princess Fadzilah Lubabul Bolkiah one of them.
Selection to trim down the squad to 15 players is scheduled to be held on March 10 at the Multipurpose Hall of the Hassanal Bolkiah National Sports Complex in Berakas.
Jinadasa, who arrived in the Sultanate in 2011, has been the driving force behind the recent success of the national netball team in the Southeast Asian region.
The national team’s latest achievement was finishing second at the South Korea Invitational Netball tournament in September after losing 30-23 to eventual winners Hong Kong.
They also improved their ranking at the Asian Netball Championship in Bangkok in the same month when they finished sixth - bettering their previous ranking of seventh.
