The Malawi National Netball Team, ‘The Queens’, will be coming back home empty handed after losing all their six matches at the two-day 2023 Fast 5 Netball Series in New Zealand.
It all started on the first day of the tournament, on Saturday, November 11, 2023 when the Queens were reduced by 42-13 to New Zealand, then 41-37 to Jamaica and also lost 41-30 to England.
When fans thought the Queens would bounce back on the second day of the competition, Australia which has defended the championship, trashed the Malawi netball team 42-24 before the Queens lost to South Africa 37-31 in their group matches.
The team later faced Jamaica in the fifth-place playoff where they went down 36-31 which made them anchor the standings on the sixth position.
Australia have claimed the title for second consecutive time after beating New Zealand in the final who are the runners up while England has finished on position three, with South Africa on position four, Jamaica on position five and Malawi on the bottom.
At the tournament, the Queens missed the services of long serving shooter Mwai Kumwenda who excused herself from the Malawi National Netball Team’s squad for the Fast5 Netball World Series and Takondwa Lwazi who retired from the national team over little rewards which she said does not match the effort and commitment she put forward to the national team.
In August this year at Netball World Cup in Cape Town, the Queens finished second in Group B, winning matches against Scotland and Barbados to qualify for the second round. In the second round in Group F, Malawi won further matches against Tonga and Fiji and finished third in the group behind England and Australia, thus failing to proceed to the knockout section of the tournament and finished 7th in the tournament.
