The Silver Ferns have beaten Jamaica 53-48 at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, a five-goal win that ends a losing run against the Sunshine Girls stretching back two Games and puts New Zealand in a strong position to reach the netball semifinals.
The match was played at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow on Sunday evening, which was Monday morning in New Zealand. It was the fixture both teams had circled from the moment the pools were drawn, and the one RNZ described beforehand as the pool’s defining game. Only the top two teams from each pool go through to the semifinals, so a loss would have left Dame Noeline Taurua’s side chasing results elsewhere.
Instead the Ferns held on in a genuinely tight contest. Five goals is close by netball standards, and it was a very different night from the team’s opener, when they ran over the top of hosts Scotland. Jamaica had come into the game off an 81-22 demolition of Trinidad and Tobago the day before, a match in which debutant Azara Wilmot shot 33 goals from 41 attempts and Romelda Aiken-George added 25 from 27, according to the Jamaica Observer. Jamaica captain Shamera Sterling-Humphrey said after that win, “I’m really, really proud. I feel like each quarter we had a target.”
The history made this one matter more than a normal pool game. Jamaica beat the Silver Ferns 67-51 in the semifinal at Birmingham in 2022, a result that pushed New Zealand out of the gold medal match and into the bronze playoff. Four years earlier at the Gold Coast, Jamaica beat them 60-55 in the bronze medal game itself. Two Commonwealth Games in a row, the Sunshine Girls had ended New Zealand’s medal ambitions at exactly the point they mattered.
The win leaves New Zealand level with Uganda at the top of Pool B, with Uganda holding first place on goal difference after playing the lower ranked sides in Wales and Trinidad and Tobago. The Ferns face Uganda on Wednesday morning New Zealand time in what now shapes as the game that decides who tops the pool. Uganda have been one of the fastest improving netball nations of the past decade and are no longer a soft draw.
New Zealand’s tournament began with a 74-44 win over Scotland in which Taurua used almost her entire squad. Grace Nweke marked her 50th international appearance in that game and shot 29 goals from 30 attempts in the first half before being rested. Debutant Carys Stythe played three quarters at goal defence and collected several intercepts. The scoreline was comfortable but the first half was scrappy, and goalkeeper Kelly Jackson was frank about it afterwards.
“I think the first half there were probably a bit of nerves in there and the connections weren’t as smooth as we hoped, but we got a lot of new combinations,” Jackson told RNZ.
Nweke, looking ahead to the Jamaica match, said, “We know Jamaica have firepower, but so do we, and I think it will be a great match-up.” That proved accurate. Jamaica’s shooting circle, built around Aiken-George, is one of the most physically imposing in world netball, and holding them to 48 was the foundation of the result.
What gives the win extra weight is everything going on behind the team. Netball New Zealand is forecasting losses of around $6 million, and the ANZ Premiership is set to post a $3.7 million deficit, with no certainty the domestic league will run next season in its current form. Players have publicly criticised the lack of clarity, and Netball New Zealand recently agreed to release Silver Ferns to sign with overseas clubs, a decision that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Several of the squad in Glasgow are already based in Australia’s Super Netball.
That backdrop makes the on-court performance harder, not easier. A team playing through an administrative crisis, with an uncertain domestic competition underneath it, has just beaten the side that knocked it out of the last two Commonwealth Games. Whatever happens in the medal rounds, that is a real result.
Netball is one of the few sports at these Games where New Zealand starts as a genuine gold medal contender. The team of 114 sent to Glasgow is the smallest since Brisbane in 1982, less than half the size of the Birmingham squad, after the programme was cut back to a slimmed down Games that at one stage looked unlikely to happen at all. The sports that made the cut carry more weight as a result.
Elsewhere, the swimmers have carried much of New Zealand’s early load. Erika Fairweather won silver in the 1500m freestyle in 15 minutes 58.97 seconds, her third medal of the Games, with the 800m freestyle still to come. Lewis Clareburt has the 200m butterfly heats ahead of him, and the women’s 3×3 basketball team has made an unbeaten start.
The Silver Ferns now get a couple of days before Uganda. Beat them and New Zealand tops Pool B and takes the more favourable semifinal draw. Either way, the hardest pool game is behind them, and the team that has spent much of the past month answering questions about balance sheets got to spend a night answering them on court instead.
What did you make of the Silver Ferns’ win over Jamaica, and do you think they can go all the way in Glasgow? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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