Proteas brace for tough Africa Netball Cup defence

The Spar Proteas are gearing up to defend their Africa Netball Cup title. 

The Jenny van Dyk led side will head to Lilongwe to face hosts Malawi, Namibia, Botswana, Uganda, Eswatini, Lesotho, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Netball Zambia formally announced the withdrawal of both their women’s and men’s teams for the continental competition set for 8 to 14 December due to financial difficulties.

The South African men’s side will be looking to win the competition for the third time in a row.

The men’s edition of the Africa Netball Cup was launched in 2023 while the women’s championship will be playing for the 15th time this year.

Van Dyk says both South African teams will be gunning for glory in the continental showpiece, even though they know that the competition won’t be a walk in the park.

“Both of us go into this as defending champions and we know that the more the other African teams play against us, the better they become. That brings that competitiveness that we need. We are not expecting an easy tournament, we are expecting a different type of format and style of play. We have made a bunch of big changes with what we observed and experienced in Australia and New Zealand. Maybe to see some of those changes start showing in the way we play the game,” says van Dyk.

The Proteas will head to the competition just as the senior Spar National Championships is about to wrap.

ENGLAND TEST SERIES ON THE HORIZON

Senior national team players will however miss this year’s Championships, which features over 110 districts, as they will be preparing for the competition.

The former Baby Proteas coach says they have been working remotely with the players as they prepare for the competition.

“We will leave two days before the tournament starts and then we will play the Africa Cup. There are no plans for a camp available at this stage which is something we need to prevent in the future. While we have the players in South Africa we need time to work with them. We do try to work with them remotely but at this stage it has a few challenges,” she explains.

The senior team coaching staff kept a keen eye on the Netball World Youth Cup that took place in Gibraltar in September.

The Baby Proteas made history by finishing in the top four for the first time in the youth global competition.

Although van Dyk indicates that there will be some changes in her squad, she doesn’t indicate whether some of the players will come from that team.

“We have the Africa Cup and the England series coming up and after that we need to be certain about the players that we will take to the Commonwealth Games. We won’t have more time with our players after England, in January they all go back to their international clubs. We will only meet each other only two weeks before the start of the Commonwealths, there are certain things we need to test. There are certain areas we still feel we lack. It is about understanding what the focus going into the Africa Cup is. Who do we need to test, where do we find that we are lacking and what type of players can fill that. You get players that play brilliantly in the other leagues but internationally there is a different demand. We will have a few changes but we will only be travelling with 12 and not 15,” she says.

South Africa will host the English Roses for a three-match test series in January to ramp up their Commonwealth Games preparations at the Ellis Park in Johannesburg.

The last time the English side played in South Africa during the 2023 Netball World Cup in Cape Town.

Van Dyk says the team took valuable lessons from their Australasian tour as the teams works to build up for the next year’s Commonwealth Games. S

outh Africa took 15 players to the tour and 13 players got to get on court including Juanita van Tonder who earned her first cap in their last match against Australia.

The former Gauteng Jaguars coach says although the tour was tough, it was something they needed ahead of the quadrennial international event.

“It was one of the most difficult tours we have ever been on. It was actually planned and designed that way because it was important for us to put our players to the test and to identify early on the areas where we are lacking, where we need to work on. The Commonwealth Games are only nine months from now and it was an important process for us. We took 14 flights in total, one travel day and two days to prepare, it was tough as a tour could get. Playing against No 2 then No 1 but it revealed a lot about the team and the character of the team,” she explains.