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Grace Chingoma Senior Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE Defence Forces Queens coach Joel Sibanda says he was happy that his troops proved that anything is possible after they secured a comfortable victory of 52-44 against pacesetters Correctional at Chikurubi in the Rainbow Amateur Netball League on Saturday.

Yesterday, the army side beat Tenax 55-31 to reduce the gap between them and the leaders to six points.

It was a dosage of good, classic netball at Chikurubi with the hosts leading the first quarter 11-8. The second quarter ended in a 25-25 as the two teams, which had some of the Gems players on the pitch, went pound for pound.

ZDF coach believes he won the tactics battle as his decision to switch his goal-defence Emma Chidziva to goal shooting paid dividends with the player becoming the best player of the day.

“I wanted to prove a point to everyone that Correctional can be beaten. They have been judging us on the two loses that we have, hence today’s surprise.

“Our aim was to beat Correctional and show everyone that it is possible. People think they are invincible.

“We were tactically good.

“We changed our players’ positions just to confuse our opponents. Sometimes teams plan and train according to a team that usually play but today they lost it.

“My target still remains the same. We want to finish in the top three nothing less,” said Sibanda.

Correctional assistant coach Faith Makoni said they will work harder to retain the title. “The match was exciting and since it is our first defeat it gave us a wake up call on our strengths and weaknesses.

“We are going to work harder looking at our weaknesses.

“The ball is round. You can line up players according to your game-plan but it will end up not coming out as you wish.

“It wasn’t our day. We don’t underestimate any team in this league. We work accordingly and if we see that the team is strong we up our game play.

“We just need to work more harder for the remaining fixtures so that we retain our title,” said Makoni.

Correctional also switched their goal-defence star and Gems skipper Felisitus Kwanga to shooting. Kangwa played the last quarter in goal shooting but the day belonged to ZDF Queens.

Results

Zimbabwe Defence Forces Queens 55-Tenax 31, Falcon 47-Glow 54, Correctional 44-ZDF 52, Glow Petroleum 81-Flow