The 14th Netball World Cup starts on Friday with Sydney, Australia hosting the latest edition. The host nation will be the firm favourites once again, having won the competition on 10 previous occasions, including the last two. Indeed the netball world has been so dominated by the Aussies and their trans-Tasman rivals New Zealand that the two have held all 12 previous titles, with one being shared in a three-way tie with Trinidad & Tobago in 1979.
The title was shared in Port of Spain because the three teams won eight out of nine round robin matches and there were no finals. The three sides lost once each, to one of the other two with the home side going down to the Silver Ferns, before beating the Aussies, who in turn toppled the Kiwis. The tournament rules at the time did not provide any criteria to separate sides and so the title was shared.
The New Zealanders have won four championships with their three outright wins coming in 1967, 1987 and 2003. No other country has had a look in. Australia’s Netball Diamonds will again be heavily favoured and captain Laura Geitz will be confident of leading her country to glory on home turf.
Casey Kopua will skipper the Silver Ferns and will be mindful of the 2011 final where the Australians needed overtime to overcome their rivals 58-57. The Kiwis would love nothing more than to upset the apple cart in their rivals’ own backyard. The best side not to have won the Netball World Cup, statistically speaking is England, who were runners-up in 1975 and bronze medallists on four occasions.
South Africa has also finished second (1995) without being able to win the overall crown. Jamaica is the only other country to have finished on the podium with three third-place finishes over the years. Going into the World Cup the host nation and its antipodean rivals are ranked first and second respectively in the International Netball Federations rankings and neutrals will desire a final between these two at the Allphones Arena on 16 August.
England, Jamaica and Malawi complete the top five with the South Africans sixth. The Spar Proteas will however take heart from their most recent meetings with the Malawian Queens; 43-33 and 40-35 victories in the Diamond Challenge round robin and final respectively. Fiji and Wales complete the top eight.
The format of the 2015 Netball World Cup appears complicated at first glance but is not that difficult to understand. The 16 teams are divided into four pools of four teams. The top two from each pool progresses to a second round robin stage consisting of two pools of four. The two top teams from these pools will contest the semi-finals.
The bottom two teams from the initial pool stage will take part in a second-tier tournament based on the same format as the competition proper, with the bottom two teams from the second main pool phase joining the second-tier teams to play-off in classification matches to determine 5th and 6th place, 7th and 8th and so on.
The initial four pools are as follows:
POOL A: Australia, Barbados, New Zealand, Trinidad & Tobago
POOL B: England, Jamaica, Samoa, Scotland
POOL C: Malawi, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka
POOL D: Fiji, Uganda, Wales, Zambia
It all starts on Friday at 10:50 Sydney time when Jamaica plays Samoa. The Malawians and South Africans are next on court before the hosts light up the court at 21:05 against Trinidad & Tobago.
*Originally published by Ntando Stemmet on the www.thesportseagle.co.za.
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