…my cuppa iced coffee…

The Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) has organised an open netball tournament on 16 and 17 February 2008, in conjunction with the 2-month long Federal Territory Day 2008 celebration. In previous years, the tournament was held only for women. For the first time ever, this year’s tournament was extended to men.

I was pretty excited about it since, aside from being the first big tournament for this year, I considered it a big break for men’s netball. Being only 3 years old, men’s netball is still not widely known and accepted in Malaysia. Most people think netball is a sport only for women. Little did they know that men have been playing netball since 1930s.

Don’t you just love stereotypes?

Anyway, 35 women’s teams and 12 men’s teams registered for the 2-day tournament. It was held at Dataran Merdeka (Independence Square). In case you’re wondering, no, they don’t have any netball court there. The organiser just drew some lines on the grass, put two goal posts at either end of the base lines and voilla! You have a netball court. On grass.

A friend of mine was quite surprised when I told her that we played netball on grass. She got even more astonished when I told her that we even played on sand. Apparently they only play on hard court, where she comes from.

TEAM LEGEND

Grouping

The game started on Saturday morning for the ladies, and afternoon for the guys. The men were divided into 2 groups, with 6 teams in each. Group A: MAS, Royale A, Sonique B, Gorgeous, Cobra A and Black Cheetah. Group B: Royale C, UPSI, Sonique A, Royale B, Legend and Cobra B. The format of the game was 10-3-10. My team’s first game was at 2:30 pm against Cobra B and I tell you, it was damn hot! The sun was so bright I could hardly open my eyes. But it was an easy game and we won 23-1. At group level, we played 4 games on Saturday and continued with the last one on Sunday.

Here is the overall scores for grouping.

With the exception of Royale B, you can see that Legend had soundly beaten the other teams. But none was more satisfying than thrashing team Sonique A 17-8.

Quarter & semi-finals

The top 4 teams in each group advanced to quarter finals. We met Sonique B and thrashed them 18-6. Out of the 8 team, 4 advanced to semi-finals: Royale A, Royale B, Sonique A and Legend. These are currently the top 4 men’s netball teams in Malaysia. Almost without fail, they would be in the semis everytime they participated in a tournament.

The game format for quarter and semi-finals was also 10-3-10. I was not in the first 7 line-up but I did get to play against Cobra B, Royale C and Sonique B in grouping and quarter-final.

Here are the results for quarter and semi-finals.

3rd & 4th placing

Royale B met Sonique A in the play-off for the 3rd and 4th places. I didn’t get to see the whole game but Royale B soundly thrashed Sonique A 23-11. Well done!

Final

As expected, Legend and Royale A made it to the final. Playing 15-5-15, it was really a close fight. We made some stupid mistakes, however, resulting in Royale A leading by 4 points after the first half. Following the coach’s earlier instructions, we reshuffled the positions for the second half and I got to play WD.

There was the possibility that, if we did not waste the chances we got in shooting, we could’ve won the tournament, but Royale A did play well and inarguably, the title was fairly won. They beat us by 3 points, 23-20. So congratulations to team Royale A.

TEAM ROYALE

We will meet again in another tournament and be assured that we will try our best to beat you then.