The Spar Proteas coach Norma Plummer is keen on taking lessons from losing against countries ranked above them rather than not learning anything in easy victories over lower ranked sides.
Plummer was speaking ahead of the third leg of the SANZEA netball quad series‚ which will include the world's top three ranked countries Australia‚ New Zealand and England at the Durban International Convention Centre.
South Africa‚ who are the lowest ranked side in the series at fifth place‚ have fallen short of victory on many occasions against these above mentioned countries‚ but they want to keep closing the gap between themselves and the top three nations in world netball.
The quad series on home soil will provide the perfect opportunity to do this‚ starting with their opening match against third ranked side England tomorrow (today for newspapers) at 5pm.
“There's always an element of wanting to perform in front of the home crowd.
"The girls want to put a good performance and this is the toughest competition which we can get. ” said Plummer‚ who won gold medals at the 2007 and 2011 World Cups with Australia.
“I'm very pleased that Netball South Africa is part of the quad series. You can choose to play teams that are underneath you who are ranked 12th or seventh and get a win or you can go out and get challenged.
"You need to be challenged. If you don't get challenged‚ then you won't improve.”
The challenge for the Proteas is to be consistent in all four quarters of the game‚ establish a lead and not succumb to pressure from the opponents.
“We know New Zealand and Australia have beaten South Africa by 35 and 55 points‚ but in the last quad series those scores were lowered.
"Our challenge is to keep lowering that and keep challenging. We will give it a good go. Our combinations will be very important to get us over the line‚” said Plummer.
The quad series is seen as a high-level international tournament outside the World Cup and Commonwealth Games‚ involving four of the five best countries in the world. Jamaica is the only country in the top five not involved in the series.
The inaugural matches in the series were played in Australia and New Zealand last year and now it has come to Durban.
Number one ranked country Australia‚ meanwhile‚ will take on New Zealand on Saturday at 3pm and the Diamonds' captain Shani Layton said the challenge for them was to keep getting better so that they remain the best team in the world.
“I don't think there's [too much] distance between us and the rest of the teams. We need to continue to strive to be the best. We always want to challenge to be the best. We have to keep trying new things‚” said Layton.
- TMG Digital
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