Friday, March 29, 2024

Four years ago the IFNA Congress was held in New Zealand where it was decided that the 2011 Congress and the World Netball Championships would be hosted by Singapore. Jodi Carreira and Judy Aknin made the journey to this beautiful South-East Asian country to represent Israel Netball at these events, and to participate in a 3-day coaching seminar where lectures were given by a variety of experts in their fields .

While attending congress provided another chance to exchange ideas and information with netball delegates from some 40 countries belonging to all five of the IFNA netball regions, the 8-day championships themselves were a fantastic opportunity to watch netball matches being played at the highest level by the top teams of the world .

It came as no surprise that Australia and New Zealand again faced each other in the wonderfully exciting final match which went into extra time. Australia's legions of yellow and green-shirted supporters almost raised the roof of the stadium when just a few seconds before the final whistle their team scored the winning goal and they took gold with a score of 58-57 !

England, with a convincing victory of 70-49 over Jamaica, claimed the bronze medal back from them for the first time since 1999 .

One of the most improved teams in the tournament was South Africa who finished in fifth place after beating Malawi by 52-50 .

Mention should also be made of the two other European teams who participated in the championships: Northern Ireland who finished eighth after beating the 11th ranked Samoan team by 66-37, and Wales who, after two successive 1-goal wins against Botswana (47-46) and Samoa (45-44), also beat Fiji in the playoff (62-47) to gain ninth place .

Israel Netball would like to thank IFNA, Netball Singapore and the Singapore Sports Council for their generous hospitality and extremely efficient running of all the events.

August 2011