TAKING ON THE WORLD
JADE Clarke is a Vitality Netball World Cup ambassador and the mostcapped player of the Vitality England Roses.
Clarke, from Manchester, has been playing netball for over 25 years and has competed in four Commonwealth Games, a member of the gold medal- winning squad at last year’s tournament.
It’s the year of netball, with the World Cup being hosted on home turf and more people than ever playing netball. ONE of my highlights of being an international netball player is being able to play in international tournaments. The biggest of them all, the Vitality Netball World Cup, is coming up this July right on our doorstep in Liverpool.
January’s Quad Series was a fantastic warm-up.
It was a series of pretty fierce battles for the Vitality England Roses. Playing against the top teams in the world, we competed against world number ones the Australian Diamonds, New Zealand’s Silver Ferns and South Africa.
It was great to see how the other teams were performing ahead of the World Cup, and to find our feet in the M&S Bank Arena where the tournament will be held – before the series kicked off, our head coach Tracey Neville said that she wanted Liverpool to feel like home for us.
We’ve seen some new rivalries heating up too, between us and the Australian Diamonds after our last-minute win at the Commonwealth Games last year.
In our Quads match against the Diamonds we had a bit of a slow start, but with eight minutes to spare, we pulled ahead.
Although we didn’t quite make the five-goal margin needed to take the overall series title, we’re really starting to build some momentum now after that 52-49 win against the Australian team.
The Quads was just a taster of what we can expect at the World Cup, being exposed to different players and styles of play, and particularly with the 24-hour turnaround of the second weekend’s matches in London.
These kinds of schedules can be such rollercoasters, going from our loss against South Africa to our win over Australia – but that’s one of the reasons I love the sport so much. It’s great preparation for this July too. All 16 teams competing in the World Cup will definitely be looking ahead at this point. As my Wasps team-mate and South Africa captain Bongi Msomi said, the intensity of playing the top three teams in the world is exactly what we all need – it’s a great competition and a huge learning curve ahead of the World Cup.
THE Vitality Netball World Cup is the world’s most prestigious netball competition and takes place from July 12-21 at the ACC Liverpool campus – home to BT Convention Centre, M&S Bank Arena and Exhibition Centre Liverpool.
The tournament will feature the top 16 teams in the world, including the England Roses, at an exciting time of unprecedented growth for women’s sport and netball in the UK.
Tickets for netball’s premier international sporting tournament are selling fast, with over 80,000 spectators confirmed so far.
Head to the Vitality Netball World Cup 2019 website for more information at nwc2019. co.uk/tickets. Jade Clarke