Gemma leads NI girls in stern test

Gemma leads NI girls in stern test

18 July 2012

NORTHERN Ireland netball captain Gemma Gibney, from Loughinisland, expressed pride in her team after they came heroically close to what would have been their greatest ever victory.

The girls in green were edged 58-52 by South Africa in a thrilling third test in Cape Town, another agonising near miss for Northern Ireland who lost 46-41 to the same opponents at last summer’s World Cup in Singapore.

“We were right in the match throughout and had South Africa really rattled,” trainee teacher Gemma said afterwards.

Although we didn’t get the win this time, we proved we belong in this company and how much we learn from every experience.

A magnificent effort from Gibney’s Greens wasn’t quite enough to take the famous scalp of the team ranked fifth in the world in their own back yard, but the superb performance earned real respect from the opposition and partisan South African crowd alike.

In spite of a series whitewash, Northern Ireland’s display in the third test earned rich praise from the local media and proving how competitive they can be should ensure they continue to receive invites to play the world’s top teams.

Gemma readily admits that exposure to this level of competition is essential to Northern Ireland’s development and prospects of continuing on the upward curve of recent years which has included reaching the World Cup quarter-finals for the first time and the historic high of runners-up place at May’s European Championships.

Although the third Test was the high point, Graduates goalkeeper Gibney takes as much satisfaction from how her team coped in adversity when South Africa were threatening to tear them apart in the first few minutes of the series.

Fresh from a test victory in netball-mad Jamaica, the Proteas were three goals up inside the very first minute of the opening encounter, but Northern Ireland responded superbly to that ominous start when they could easily have sunk without trace.

Unbelievably, from 6-1 down in the fourth minute, the tourists somehow outscored South Africa in the remainder of the opening quarter and although losing 61-37 came out of the match with heads held high.

“No one doubted that playing South Africa away would be a steep learning curve, but those first few minutes were a real eye-opener in that South Africa’s physicality took us by surprise and they were stronger and faster than we were. 

“We were in danger early on of being badly over run, but I thought we adjusted well to what was being thrown at us and once

we’d weathered the storm there was a feeling we could give them a good game,” says Gemma.

Northern Ireland’s double World Cup winning Aussie coach, Jill McIntosh, targeted the third test as her team’s best chance of causing a famous upset and kept her powder dry by fielding an experimental line-up in the middle match.

Several leading lights were left on the bench until half-time before coming on to help Northern Ireland finish strongly in a second successive defeat by a 24-goal margin, this time on a scoreline of 66-42.

The strongest seven then threw everything at the Proteas last Wednesday, getting their noses in front in the opening period and just trailing by a single goal at half-time before fatally losing ground in the third-quarter.

South Africa took a seemingly conclusive cushion of nine goals into the final 15 minutes but still looked vulnerable as Gibney’s greens fought back to within three with the skipper’s predecessor netting 38 of her 45 shots to claim the player-of-the-match award.

Having been a leading member of the Irish Students squad which finished fourth at the previous week’s World University Championships, Gibney ended up playing nine matches in 10 days on tour in spite of ongoing knee niggles which meant battling through the pain barrier.