Sports Reporter
GEMS skipper, Felistus Kwangwa, says they made a number of mistakes in their 42-56 loss to Malawi in the Africa Netball Cup in Windhoek, Namibia, yesterday.
They will now take on Tanzania today.
And Kwangwa wants a response from her team who have just one win, against Namibia, in their three matches.
They have now lost to Malawi and South Africa.
The Gems went down fighting yesterday and showed fighting spirit, especially in the second quarter, where they managed to score 12 goals.
Malawi quickly settled in the first quarter took a lead of 18-8.
They never looked back from there.
Powered by their skipper, and experienced goal defender Carol Mtukule, they managed to intercept the Gems attacks, on numerous occasions, to stretch their lead in the third quarter to 43-31.
“I think whenever we got our turnover, sometimes we were not patient enough to get to our scoring end, so we were losing the ball unnecessarily,’’ said Kwangwa.
“We made a lot of unnecessary mistakes.
“We will make sure that we convert all our centre passes, and the turnovers that we will get, tomorrow.’’
Gems coach, Lloyd Makunde, made one change yesterday with Sharon Bwanali starting ahead of Lynette Tanhira.
“We wanted to win this game, just a few errors made the scoreline to balloon like that but the fighting spirit was there,’’ he said.
“There were some footwork calls, which I actually didn’t understand, and it cost us.
“Defensively, we were good and attacking, we were not so good, and missed some chances.
“We are going to play just like we did in the second quarter, that is our normal game.’’
Zimbabwe Netball Association president, Leticia Chipandu, said the rebuilding process was going on very well with the young players bonding with the seniors.
“I am happy with the girls’ performance, considering that for the bulk of the players, it is their first outing. We would like to nurture this team, give us two years or so, we will be tough to beat.
“We need to prepare better for tomorrow (today) we need to win the game against Tanzania, we need to win the game against Kenya, and we need to win against Zambia.
“We still have a long way to go and I am sure we will get there with time,” said Chipandu.