The tide has turned for Papua New Guinea netball team this time showing top performance compared to its 2022 winless campaign on the international scene.
With four victories in four matches at the Mirxes Nations Cup in Singapore.
On Wednesday evening Sri Lanka took the courts in one thing in mind, to halt PNG’s winning streak. However, Sri Lanka fell short, as PNG once again impressed beating Sri Lanka 67-51.
The new-look PNG Pepes team is taking the courts by storm determined to improve their standing after they finished last at the Pacific Netball Series in Australia, the country’s governing body for the sport, Netball PNG, made a lot of changes to its coaching staff and its players.
These changes are paying off. The team is being boosted with the inclusion of six overseas based players as PNG continues dominance at the Mirxes Nations Cup, undefeated.
PNG Pepes head coach Annie Iamo says the move to add players from Australia was to raise their competitiveness against their Oceania counterparts.
“Most of them are in my mid-court, so they bring speed and they are very nippy too, so that’s a plus for us in the team.”
Ranked No. 36, Papua New Guinea, who have six Australian-based players, are the third-lowest ranked team among the six sides at the ongoing Nations Cup.
The other teams are world No. 19 Cook Islands, Sri Lanka (20), Singapore (26), Canada (unranked) and Singapore A.
Looking ahead to Friday’s match against Cook Islands, Aussie recruit Yves Angelina Chee said: “It’s definitely about playing to our strengths. We know that as a playing group, our strengths are our speed and our agility to get around players. Seeing as the Cook Islands is quite a tall team, we definitely need to use that to our advantage to get the win for us.”