THE national netball team is aiming to do better at this year’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland as they open their campaign today.
The Proteas will play their opening match in Group B against Malawi at 10pm.
Other countries that have been drawn in this group are Tonga, Northern Ireland, Australia and England.
Since netball was first played at the Commonwealth Games in 1998, the country’s team has played in every tournament, but has never returned with a medal.
In the seven competitions they played in, they finished sixth three times, fifth twice, seventh and fourth once.
According to coach Jenny van Dyk, although it doesn’t mean much to end the streak of not getting a medal in this competition, the most important thing is that they do better than what they did in the recent Commonwealths in Birmingham in 2022, where they finished in sixth place.
“What we aim for is to finish in a better place. What makes us happy is that we moved from sixth to fifth place. That’s what we’ve been working for, but we’d be even happier if we couldn’t make it to the semi-finals,” said Van Dyk.
“The preparations went well because we were able to play three friendly matches against Uganda which were intense. I have been working with this group of players for some time and I believe that we are ready to compete with the best teams in the world that we will play with in the group stage.
“Ours is that we are determined on the field but we will respect all the teams we will face, especially Australia who are the world champions”
Australia is the leading gold medalist at the Commonwealth Games having won four times.
New Zealand has won the tournament twice and England has been the champion once.
The annual Commonwealth Games, which includes 10 sports including athletics, basketball, weightlifting, swimming and others, started on Thursday and will conclude on August 2.