Scotland secured qualification for the 2019 World Cup in impressive style, defeating both Wales and Northern Ireland in the qualifying tournament over the weekend despite both their opponents being higher ranked.
With Perth hosting the event, the Scots had home advantage but with the home team ranked eleventh in the world, they went into the tournament as underdogs against ninth-ranked Wales and eight-ranked Northern Ireland.
First up for the Scots was Wales on Friday evening and the home team duly despatched their higher-ranked opponents 52-40 despite having trailed 23-21 at half-time.
Following Northern Ireland’s defeat of Wales on Saturday, the Irish and the Scots were both guaranteed qualification to the World Cup but with the Scots losing out to Northern Ireland by one single point at Netball Europe last October, they were out for revenge.
A sublime performance saw the Scots take control of the match from the first minute, taking a 14-6 lead by the end of the first quarter and never looking back, ultimately securing a 52-31 victory.
Scotland captain Claire Brownie admitted that she could not have been more delighted with her team’s performance over the weekend. “We’re absolutely ecstatic – we came here to get two (wins) from two and we’ve completed our job so we’re so proud,” she told BBC Sport.
“We’re the best prepared we have ever been coming and that’s a real credit to our management team, our Institute support and the pre-season programme that’s been put in place that’s allowed us to come here ready to compete and ready to win both games.”
And Brownie revealed that the sell-out crowd which made it to Perth to support the team despite the treacherous weather conditions played a significant part in the home players’ impressive performance. “The fans have been amazing,” she said. “You can’t underestimate what impact the support has had – whether it’s been on social media or in person. So if we keep getting that support, we’ll keep coming up with the goods as well as we can.”
Their brace of victories has now set them up perfectly for their assault on Gold Coast 2018, which begins in less than three months.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here