Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Louisa Brownfield, part of the England squad currently competing in the World Netball Championships in Singapore blogs on progress so far and their chances of winning gold.
We have been in Singapore for over a week now preparing for the games which began on Sunday (3 July). The weather has been extremely hot but we are coping really well, we played a practice match on Friday and it felt great to get back out on court. On Saturday we played our last practice game before competition starts, this time against Fiji which provided another good run-out in anticipation of our first game in the tournament.
Seeing the stadium for the first time was spectacular and ticket sales have been high (with 80 per cent sold before the games began) so we are looking at over 9,000 people coming to spectate which is going to be amazing.
Going for gold
We played our first group game yesterday against Malawi. It was a tough match, with the Malawi side not giving anything away and making us fight hard for the win. And this level of play stood us in good stead for our second game against Barbados earlier today (which we also won!) and the harder games later in the tournament that are yet to come! Our final group game is tomorrow against Malaysia.
Our chances of winning gold are good, the squad have been working really hard over the last four years, we’ve prepared really well and as a team we are playing the best we have ever played, we are peaking at the right time.
Olympic spirit
Being a part of the biggest women’s sport in the country is simply fantastic, it’s a shame that it’s not part of the Olympics but we will keep working hard to make it a part of the Olympics in the future.
We will all be supporting the games during London 2012, the mountain biking will be in my home town in Hadleigh, Essex, so it will be really exciting to see the athletes come in and compete near to where I live.
Further information
The World Netball Championships 2011 run from 3-10 July. View the order of play.
View images from the Championships on the WNC Facebook site.