Singapore defeats Ireland to finish third in Nations Cup 2022, Botswana crowned champion
The Singapore national netball team ended the Nations Cup 2022 in third place after they defeated Ireland 52-36 in the third and fourth placing match at the OCBC Arena, Singapore Sports Hub on Saturday. Botswana, undefeated throughout the competition, were crowned champions, beating Fiji 65-37 in the finals, while Malaysia finished in fifth place after a 47-40 win over the Singapore A team.
Singapore wore down Ireland after a closely-fought battle in the first half, prevailing 52-36 to finish in third place. Ireland held a slim lead early in the match, but Singapore caught up to hold the score at 11-11 after the first quarter.
Singapore’s fierce defending proved to be key as the hosts forced turnovers in the second quarter, which they duly converted to edge ahead 23-20 at half-time. Buoyed by a combination of unwavering momentum, confidence and enthusiastic crowd support, Singapore surged ahead to secure victory in dominant fashion.
Despite missing out on the title, Singapore defender Sindhu Nair, who played from the second quarter onwards felt that the team consisting of several players that are still building up on their international match experiences managed to improve on their showing.
“In the past few games, we were working on several things including team coordination and passes. We have some young players, so it was also about exposing them to this level of play. Everything came together very nicely today. There were some patches of errors, but we always managed to pull through and got stronger as the game progressed,” said Sindhu.
“I will say it’s one of our best performances today because we put everything that we learnt over the past week together, and it was really nice to see everything working out well for us. We also stuck to our game plan today.”
Botswana’s imperious form continued in the title match as they cruised to a 65-37 victory over 2011 champions Fiji to claim their first Nations Cup crown, dancing in celebration before receiving their medals. Botswana were quicker, sharper and more accurate, landing 82% of their shots compared to Fiji’s 79%.
Botswana captain Fattimah Dino, who was also named her team’s most valuable player, was extremely proud of her team’s achievement and paid tribute to coach Jenny Van Dyk.
“I’m very happy. This is our first title – we have been coming here to play at the Nations Cup but we’ve never done this before. We are very, very happy to be champions. Our coach really helped us because you can see now that we are very competitive,” said Fattimah.
“In the past, we just came to participate but she’s helped us with training and we’ve worked hard, and now we are competing. We were disappointed not to qualify for the World Cup, so we went back home and prepared ourselves to play better the next time.”
Fiji coach Unaisi Rokoura congratulated Botswana for their fine performance, adding that Nations Cup 2022 would provide valuable experience for her team in their preparations for next year’s Netball World Cup.
“For us, we gave away possession of the ball and Botswana came in and wanted more. We had a game plan that we wanted to implement tonight but unfortunately we didn’t do that. We have a few young players who have fewer than 10 caps, so this is just an opportunity for us to build up for the World Cup next year. When we go back now it’s about utilising the players that we have in the competitions lined up for next year before we head off to Cape Town,” explained Rokoura.
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