Tracey Neville has urged her England netball team to use the historic victory over New Zealand to spur them to Commonwealth gold and allow the veteran Geva Mentor to retire happy, whenever that may be.
England beat the fast declining New Zealand, who also lost to Malawi, to top their group. It is the first time they have defeated them since netball was introduced to the Commonwealth Games in 1998 and it continued their unbeaten run.
The 54-45 win means they face Jamaica in the semi-finals on Saturday. “It was guts and a lot of hard work that got us through that performance,” Neville said. The coach paid tribute to the 33-year-old Mentor, who made her England debut against New Zealand in 2001 aged 16 and is widely considered one of the world’s best defenders. “Geva is so experienced,” Neville said. “It’s brilliant to have her at the back, she comes through when we need her. I always joke she’s not retiring until she gets a gold medal. You talk about people starting to dip at the end of their career, she’s just got better and better. She’s like a fine wine.”
Mentor, who is from Bournemouth and plays her club netball for Sunshine Coast Lightning in Australia, said beating New Zealand, the No 2-ranked team in the world after Australia, in a major tournament was a breakthrough, despite the Kiwis’ faltering form.
“It’s important for us to have that win,” she said. “We’ve done it the past couple of times but we’ve never done it in a major tournament. We mean business and if we want to achieve it and go all the way into that gold-medal final, we’ve got to beat every team.
“We knew New Zealand were definitely going to be hurting after that loss to Malawi and we knew they’d have a point to prove. The number of girls playing in Australia – we have that experience now. We’re collectively able to pull together as a team. It’s exciting netball, exciting for the crowd and for us as a team to be able to hold off when we know New Zealand are coming back at us. It’s character building.”
The woes of England’s track and field team continued when the high-jumper Robbie Grabarz, a bronze medallist at the London Olympics in 2012, failed with three attempts at 2.21m.
However, Dina Asher-Smith and Zharnel Hughes qualified comfortably for their respective 200m finals and have a good chance of restoring some glory to the team.
Hughes, who is originally from Anguilla and trains in Jamaica at Racers Track Club, the former base of Usain Bolt, looked in imperious form has he won his semi-final in 20.37sec.
Asher-Smith, Britain’s fastest woman over 100m and 200m, came second in her semi-final behind Jamaica’s Shericka Jackson, who is also joined in the final by her compatriots Elaine Thompson and Sashalee Forbes.
“Obviously you want to go and win a semi-final but I eased off,” Asher-Smith said. “You can get into a tear-up if you want to and there was a little thing in the back of my mind reminding me it was a semi-final. I’m really excited. I ran 22.44 and I feel good so I’m happy with that.”
The 22-year-old said she was not feeling any additional pressure after other established names in the England team, including Grabarz, Andrew Pozzi and Sophie Hitchon, failed to deliver in recent days.
“I don’t pay attention to what’s happening outside the bubble,” she said, “so I don’t know what’s been said. But we all want to come out here and do well and we all want each other to do well. We are a team so there’s no individual pressure.”
