THE Zambia national netball team started the PacifiAus Sports championship on a positive note by beating Kenya 49-34 in the first match played at the Gold Coast Sports and Leisure Centre in Australia.
Zambia had dominated play from the first whistle and won the first quarter 16-5. Kenya fought back to level the scores by the third quarter and only lost by four points after the final quarter. The win cheered coach Lazarus Tembo who had started with a young squad before introducing the experienced players in the third and final quarters.
“This is one of the toughest games that we have played. Looking at how Kenya played they gave us a very tough game and I think the final scores were very close,” Tembo said.
“We decided to go with a very young squad in the first quarter and they came out with guns blazing and took control of the game but after the first quarter Kenya came out tough in the second quarter and they were physical, our young girls couldn’t cope with that and I think fatigue played a major factor because we were not able to withstand the physicality of the Kenyans and that’s how we made changes and the advantage with us is that we have both talent and experience on our side and even in our subs we decided to bring in older players with experience and we managed to hold on up to the end of the game.
Kenya coach Penina Nyakundi attributed the loss to a shaky defence in the first and last quarters.
Nyakundi said Team Kenya will attempt to redeem themselves in the next fixtures to make it to the semifinals. Zambia will play Singapore in the next fixture while Kenya will play the Tonga Islands and Tembo is confident that Team Zambia will snatch another win. “Our game plan will be similar to the way we played Kenya. With Kenya the major issue is that they were physical compared to the rest of the teams so for now is for us to go back and have our team talk and we will plan from there,” Tembo said. “We have a very capable technical bench and we will be able to win the rest of our games. As you know the target is to win our pool so that we can meet the second-best team in the other pool for the semifinals,” he said.
