MELBOURNE, Australia, CMC – Jamaica’s Sunshine Girls were dominated by the Australia Diamonds for the second straight match to concede their netball series here on Sunday.
The number one-ranked Australians secured a comfortable 73-41 victory over the third-ranked Sunshine Girls at Perth’s RAC Arena, to assume an unassailable 2-0 lead in their three-match series.
It followed Thursday’s victory by the Aussies, who romped to a 72-41 win in the opening match.
Gezelle Allison led the scoring for the Sunshine Girls with 16 goals from 18 attempts, while Simone Gordon added 13 from 19. Captain Shanice Beckford finished with 11 from 15, and Kestina Sturridge chipped in with one from one.
Australia took charge from the opening whistle, rushing out to a 20-8 lead at the end of the first quarter and extending their advantage to 15 (35-20) by the half.
The hosts control the contest thereafter, outscoring Jamaica 19-13 in the third period to take a commanding 54-33 lead heading into the final quarter.
Sunshine Girls head coach Sasher-Gaye Henry-Wright pointed to a slow start as a major factor behind the heavy defeat.
She, however, maintained that the team had made some progress from the first game.
“I think the girls gave a much better performance than they did in game one, but we still fell short of the objectives that we set out for in this game.
“We really wanted to hit some scoring marks for our quarterly scores, but unfortunately, we didn’t meet those targets. We really wanted to limit Australia to under 15 goals in each quarter, and we only achieved that once,” Henry-Wright said.
“We also wanted to score more goals than we did in the first game, but I think our start is an issue, and we definitely want to work harder on that.”
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