Paul-Andre Walker, Staff Reporter
Jamaica's captain and goalshooter Elaine Davis lunges for a ball ahead of the challenge from England's goalkeeper Geva Mentor during the first game of a Tri-test practice series between the teams at the National Indoor Sports Centre last night. Looking on is Simone Forbes. Jamaica lost the game 53-37. - IAN ALLEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
It took little pressure from England's netballers to give Oberon Pitterson and the new-look Sunshine Girls a 53-37 thrashing in the first game of their tri-Test practice series at the National Indoor Sports Centre.
For Pitterson, it was a bitter pill to swallow, as she felt helpless for the first time.
"It's hard to sit on the bench and see so many simple things going wrong. I thought to myself, 'Should I go out there?' because really it was a little simple. We made it hard for ourselves out there," admitted Pitterson.
For the Jamaicans, Elaine Davis led from the front, shooting 22 goals from her 26 attempts.
Simone Forbes, who was being very aggressive and winning a lot of balls at goal attack, found that she couldn't find her range and could only manage nine goals from 17 attempts. Young Romelda Aiken had six from seven.
The English never had remarkable statistics either but depended on a monster third quarter where they went from 22-18 leaders at the end of the second to 40-28 leaders.
Jamaica's slow start in the first quarter, where they ended trailing 13-8, was recovered in the second when they outscored the English 10-9.
However, Rachel Dunn had time and space to throw up 47 attempts from which she reaped 38 goals.
Young Pamela Cookey did well in her senior appearance against the Jamaicans, sinking 15 goals from 19 attempts.
Outside of the English effort, the Jamaicans had some trouble. Peter-Gaye Thomas made a number of errors at crucial times, and Marion Campbell, while she played well, didn't mesh with the team.
Defensively, while they were aggressive on the ball, they were slow to track the movements of the English attackers. Then they had the problem of passing the ball out of defence before their opponents stifled chances of quick attacks.
SECOND TEST
After the game, England's coach, Margaret Caldow, said she was impressed with her team's performance but was still looking for more in today's second game.
"I thought the team played very well. We've been preparing very well and we had some good results against South Africa recently so the big score didn't surprise us.
"The only negative was the fact that we lost so many balls unnecessarily. If we can take care of that then we can look for plus-60 points tomorrow (today)," she said.
