The national senior women’s netball team, the Debmarine Desert Jewels finished seventh at the World Netball African Regional qualifiers at the University of Pretoria (Tuks) Rembrandt Hall on Friday night.
The 2023 Cape Town Africa Netball World Cup qualifiers saw nine teams competing against each other for top honours.
Namibia only managed to win one game in pool A and then missed out on a chance of competing for the top two final qualification spots for the 2023 Netball World Cup.
With their failure to finish in the top two in pool A they were downgraded to compete against Tanzania and Eswatini for positions seventh, eighth and ninth.
In their opening match of the playoff on Friday morning, the Debmarine Desert Jewels narrowly beat Tanzania 46-45 and in their second match on Friday evening against Eswatini, the Namibian girls took a lead of 18-8 at the end of the first quarter. The Desert Jewels took a six-point lead just five minutes in the game and used all their turnover balls successfully.
The second quarter ended with a 35-22 score for Namibia who continued with their dominance but it was not made easier by their opponents Eswatini who scored 14 points in this quarter compared to the eight points in the first quarter.
In the third quarter, Namibia made several unforced errors which started bringing Eswatini back into the game. With just four minutes into the game, Namibia made five unforced errors and Eswatini capitalised on that to reduce the gap to nine points and then two points at the end of the quarter.
Eswatini outscored Namibia with 22 points in this quarter as Namibia had a nightmare of a quarter where they just scored nine points but were lucky as time ran out and they still maintained their lead with a two-point difference with the quarter ending 44-42.
The final quarter saw Namibia struggling with ball possessions in the opening minutes but as the match progressed the Desert Jewels started making use of their plays and won several turnovers which gave them the advantage to increase the score line as the match ended 59-50.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency
