Queens finish 55th beat Australia again

Malawi’s Queens beat Australia 33-30 on Sunday—a second victory over them in three days—to finish fifth at the Fast5 World Netball Series in Auckland New Zealand.

On Friday, the Queens stunned Australia 33-15.

Unlike Friday’s contest, in which Australia were dazzled into submission, Sunday’s encounter monitored on SuperSport 4, was a tight-throat affair.

Shooter Mwawi Kumwenda, who struggled in the game against continental rivals South Africa on Saturday, was the centrepiece of the Queens’s victory and was accurate from all the three scoring zones.

Both Queens coach Griffin ‘Zagalo’ Saenda and NAM attributed the team’s failure to make it into last four to poor preparations.

“We only trained for two weeks ahead of the tournament and that wasn’t enough for a tournament of such magnitude,” said Saenda from New Zealand on Saturday.

NAM general secretary Helene Mpinganjira said apart from poor preparations, fatigue also caught up with the Queens.

“It was not easy playing three games in a day. South Africa were much fitter because they had better preparations,” she said.

Meanwhile, Australia netball team coach Lisa Alexander has admitted that her charges were second best to Malawi Queens at the Fast5 World Series.

“Malawi did a great job. In their second-quarter, they completely and utterly outplayed us. But I was really proud of the way the girls game back and shot some six pointers and three pointers,” Alexander is quoted as saying by nz.sports.yahoo.com.

“It think it needs to be very clear to the netball public that we were taking into this competition a development team and yes, we do not like losing and it is very unAustralian in respects of netball, but we also have to respect the other teams,” Alexander is quoted as saying.

Queens’ Mwawi was beaming for a long time after the victory: “We are very excited, Australia are a very tough team.”

“It has been a good experience for us. Most of the time, we cannot come to events because of money. But this has been good for us, and people in Malawi are so excited,” Mwawi told the online publication.