PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC):AS PROMISED by the Ministry of Sport late last year, technical help has arrived for Trinidad and Tobago netball ahead of the World Championship later this year.
Former Australian national player Sharon Finnan is now in the country as technical director, the T&T Netball Association's (TTNA) president, Austrid Rochford, said.
Rochford did not disclose much but indicated that Finnan will control all aspects of the national team as it prepares to compete in the World Netball Championship (WNC) in New Zealand from November 10-17.
"I am not going to release much details because we will be having a press conference next week but I will say that she will be in charge of everything," said Rochford.
Finnan was a member of the Australian team that won the World Championships in 1991 and 1999 and she played for the Australian squad in 1994 and 2000.
For the past seven years, Finnan worked as national netball development manager for National Aboriginal Sports Corporation Australia. Before this, she worked at the New South Wales Department of Sport and Recreation in a variety of high-profile roles.
Finnan was awarded the Medal of the Order Of Australia (OAM) for services to sport in 1992. In 1995, she was inducted into the Randwick City Council Hall of Fame.
First-round play
T&T, joint world champions in 1979, were drawn earlier this month in the WNC's Group B for first-round play against ex-champions Australia, Samoa and Scotland.
The top two teams in each of the four groups will qualify for the second round.
New Zealand agreed to host the tournament, which was removed from Fiji following a military coup there in December.
To strengthen the team, the TTNA has called on overseas players.
"Former junior national shooter Candice Nelson, who was named the top shooter in the 2004 World Youth Netball Championships held in Fort Lauderdale, and Patrice Edwards are here already and will join the squad," said Rochford.
Nelson and Edwards are completing basketball scholarships in the United States.
The 'Calypso Girls' are being coached by Grace Parkinson Griffith, who led the team when they booked their ticket to New Zealand after winning the Americas Federation of Netball Associations (AFNA) World Qualifying Championship in Barbados last August with an impressive record of seven wins from as many matches.
Hosts Barbados ended in second spot to also qualify.
In the last world event, T&T finished in 10th place when the tournament was played in Jamaica in 2003. It was their worst finish in WNC history, suffering losses to Jamaica (89-30) and South Africa (51-49). The local side has less than six months to go before the tournament jumps off at Waitakere City, Auckland.
A total of 16 countries drawn from Oceania, Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas will contest the 2007 WNC.
Qualifying
It will be the first time that teams have had to qualify to attend. Previously, entry was open to all countries regardless of their ranking.
The five top-ranked teams from the 2003 World Championships in Jamaica - world champions New Zealand, runners-up Australia, Jamaica, England and South Africa - were given seeded positions.
Fiji also got a protected seeding place as the original host of the tournament.
In Group A, defending champions New Zealand will meet Wales, Malawi and Botswana while third-ranked Jamaica have been grouped in Group C with Fiji, Singapore and Cook Islands.
Fourth-seeded England will meet fifth-ranked South Africa, Barbados and Malaysia in Group D.
The championships will be decided over a round-robin in each section with the top two teams from each section progressing to quarter-finals, before the semi-finals and final.
