{"id":5750,"date":"2011-10-25T12:09:16","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T12:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=5750"},"modified":"2011-10-25T12:09:16","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T12:09:16","slug":"malawi-queens-romp-home-past-ring-rusty-proteas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2011\/10\/25\/malawi-queens-romp-home-past-ring-rusty-proteas\/","title":{"rendered":"Malawi Queens Romp Home past Ring-Rusty Proteas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>After defeating the Malawi Queens at the World Netball Championships in July, the Spar Proteas walked on court confident that they could defeat their African nemesis. However, it was the Malawians that were the better team in Perth, Australia on Sunday, as the Proteas made some fatal errors, often losing the ball to their opponents, which proved to be costly.<\/p>\n

\"Spar<\/a>South Africa was the first to score at the start of the match, but lost their lead early on, and never regained it. Despite it being a tight first quarter, Malawi was quick to overtake and was leading the Proteas 6\/2 by the eleven-minute mark. By the end of the first quarter Malawi lead South Africa by 15 goals to 8.<\/p>\n

Spar Proteas coach Elize Kotze made a number of changes to the team for the second quarter. Replacing the wing defence position of Thuli Qegu with Vice-Captain Zanele Mdodana, and changing the defence and attack to allow for Anja Opperman and Zukelwa Cwaba to have some court time, didn\u2019t make the difference that the team so desperately needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew that Malawi was running away with us,\u201d said Mdodana after the match. \u201cIt seemed surreal, we knew we needed to pick it up, but just couldn\u2019t get it right.\u201d The Queens led at half time by 32\/16.<\/p>\n

The Spar Proteas started to show a bit more vigour in the third quarter and managed to score 13 goals to Malawi\u2019s 15, but it still wasn\u2019t enough. The Malawian team was quicker, and more determined. \u201cWe need to take a serious look at player commitment,\u201d said Proteas coach Elize Kotze.<\/p>\n

\u201cA positive aspect of this match, was that it enabled team management to see who would, and who wouldn\u2019t make it as an international player. We are not going to carry players anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the match, South Africa lost momentum and motivation, and ended with a loss of 37\/61 to the Malawi Queens. \u201cWe had a very young team on court today,\u201d said Kotze post-match, \u201cThe fact that three of our core players from World Cup were missing really showed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leigh-Ann Zackey, who has recently retired from netball, Claudia Basson and Maryka Holtzhausen were not available, and the lack of maturity and expertise on court was evident.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will always be difficult for me to lose a game\u201d said Kotze, \u201cAs there is always a lot at stake.\u201d \u201cWe now know that we need to make some serious changes if we are going to get back into the top four countries in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Proteas will be returning to South Africa on the morning of Wednesday 26 October. Their next international tournament will be the Fast Net, taking place in Liverpool from the 7th-9th November 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After defeating the Malawi Queens at the World Netball Championships in July, the Spar Proteas walked on court confident that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[164],"tags":[475,258,380],"class_list":["post-5750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-netball","tag-malawi","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}