Langkawi Beach Netball Tournament 2008
15Apr2008 Filed under: Netball, Sports Author: Awangku Yusli 697 views
Netball on sand? Who’d've thought such thing could be turned into a tournament? Well, it’s another one of Malaysia’s specialties, in addition to playing netball on grass and hard court. Of course, we only play on sand on special occasions, and the annual Malaysia Water Festival 2008, Langkawi definitely qualified as such.
Divided into 3 categories (men, women and veteran), beach netball was one of the 115 events organised for the 3-day long festival, held from 3 to 5 April 2008. All thanks to the sponsors, the event promised really generous cash rewards for the winners: RM2,000 for the champion, RM1,500 for second place, RM1,000 for third place and so on until the 8th place.
10 teams participated, some for the first time. With the prize money that big, who wouldn’t want to join, eh? Which was the case for this one beach volleyball team, who thought it would be easy games for them. Deceived by appearances, little did they know that half of the participating teams consist of “professional” netball players. They were indeed in for a shock.
Preliminary round was played on Friday,04/04/2008 and the teams were divided into 2 groups. Man, what a hot day it was. That was my first time playing netball on sand, by the way. Definitely different from the usual hardcourt or grass. Felt like I gained an extra kilo.
Anyway, here are the results for the preliminary round:
Top 4 teams from each group qualified for the quarter final. Played the next morning, it was still a very hot day. The results are:
The 3rd and 4th placing match was between Legend and Royale A, which was won by Legend by a handy 10 points difference. The score was 18-8. The final, played simultaneously, was between Royale B and Royale D. Royale B narrowly won the match by 1 point (10-9).
So congratulations to the winners. It was definitely fun playing on sand.
The photos are available for viewing at my Pesta Air Malaysia, Langkawi 2008 photo album.
15 Responses to “Langkawi Beach Netball Tournament 2008”
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mahathir
April 17th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
kalah lagi dgn royale…asyik fight 3-4 placing sja…bila nak improve nie?
aku rasa kalau legend pakai skirt maybe boleh membuatkan royale terpegun, n seterusnya mudahlah nak menang…hahahaha… jgn mare aaa….
Brendon Tagg
April 17th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Beach netball; what a good idea! And Mahathir - hehe, perhaps you could get a few pointers from some of the old fa’afafine players here New Zealand - very nice!
Awangku Yusli
April 18th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Fa’afafine? Translation, if you please
Hey Brendon.. maybe you can organise a beach netball tournament now in New Zealand. Who knows.. it could be as popular as beach volleyball. Yeyyy…
mahathir
April 18th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Wow, Awangku’s getting support here…:) ok, let’s go New Zealand…a nice place to see, nice place to play (ehem ehem) beach netball…
Brendon Tagg
April 19th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Hehe … in Samoan culture fa’afafine are born male but for various reasons socialised as women.
They’re accepted in Samoa as a “third gender” but when they migrated to New Zealand the white people here didn’t know what to think! Because they weren’t allowed to play netball as women, they formed their own teams and became really awesome (and entertaining) players.
Yeah man, it would be cool to play beach netball here, although just this morning the wind changed direction and our weather now comes direct from Antarctica instead of Australia. :’(
Awangku Yusli
April 19th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Hey guess what.. we have that here as well. If you browse through the photos I took during the games, you can see that quite a number of the players are these fa’afafine. Let’s just hope I won’t get a smack on the head for that. They’re my friends, so they’re kinda entitled to do so. Hehehehe…
But yeah, I agree with you that these people make excellent players. Really fun to watch, especially when they play against straight guys. Hehehehe…
Bad weather? Come over to Malaysia and play in next year’s Malaysia Water Festival in Langkawi. You’d love the place.
Brendon Tagg
April 19th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Hey, that’s interesting! There are hardly any fa’afafine around men’s netball here now, but for some you’d never guess they’re male. Apparently one New Zealand rep was sex-tested before playing against Australia; it must be the only sport where ‘men’, not ‘women’ have to prove their gender!
It *would* be fun to play netball over there - my wife is going to a conference in ‘Starhill’, KL, in June. Would that entitle me to call myself a ‘netball international’? hehehe
Awangku Yusli
April 19th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
I don’t have the info on any tournament in June as yet. If there’s one, I’d definitely put it here.
Why don’t you bring along your sports attire? You can join us in our weekly training sessions. You know.. just for the fun of it. We usually train Tuesday and Wednesday nights, not far from Starhill.
Brendon Tagg
April 21st, 2008 at 4:59 am
Awesome, I’ll definately bring my sports shoes then. I think we arrive on June 16 and then leave on June 19, so I should be able to make it along.
Awangku Yusli
April 24th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Let’s just hope it won’t rain that night. We’re having bad weather here lately
Brendon Tagg
April 29th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
I never thought about that, but even if it rains, at least it won’t be cold! We sometimes get snow in winter here, but we never have to worry about the rain because we can usually play indoors!
Awangku Yusli
April 30th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
The thing with indoor courts here in KL.. they’re not very many of them and the cost is just too expensive. We only get to play indoor if we have friendly with the national team or some rich teams. Hehehehe…
Brendon Tagg
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Hehe, yeah it’s definately more expensive here too, and you have to fight hard to get proper wooden courts (there are three) as opposed to the artificial turf (there are 16 of those). Cool, who does your national team play against? I sorta know a few guys from the NZ team. Oh yeah - and we’ve just booked into Melia Hotel for 16-19 June.
Awangku Yusli
May 6th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Well, truth to tell.. we wouldn’t really care the floor type as long as it’s indoor
We don’t have a men’s national team as yet. The one my team played against was the women’s national team. And the last game we played was before they went to New Zealand for the World Cup. Too bad they didn’t do well there.
Brendon Tagg
May 7th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Hey, that’s cool that you played the Malaysian women’s team, was it a good game? I remember them finding it tough at the world champs, but then netball is becoming a much bigger deal than it used to be.