Khanyisa Chawane and her band of netball heroines fought back to down England 52-48 in the first Test at the Ellis Park arena on Thursday night, delivering large doses of brilliance sprinkled with some exasperating errors. The Spar Proteas led at halftime but, one point down going into the final quarter, they hit the turbos to run out deserved winners. South Africa, fifth in the world, dominated their fourth-ranked rivals who they will face again at the same venue on Saturday and Sunday.
And they’ll meet up again at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow later this year. There was much to celebrate, but Chawane warned that they made too many errors. “Our defenders turned a lot of balls today and that could have given us an even bigger margin against England … we didn’t convert as much as we could have.
“We’d still expect more from ourselves in those turnovers because with a team like England, I don’t think you get many chances and today we actually got a lot of chances that we could have used,” added the skipper, whose team wore black armbands to commemorate the 14 schoolchildren killed recently in a road accident. Rolene Streutker opened South Africa’s account with the first goal of the match, and the sides traded blows equally to 3-3 until a misunderstanding between goal attack Owethu Ngubane and centre Tarle Mathe cost possession and the English pounced to make it 4-3. That third quarter could have thrown us off and they could have just taken the win.
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But when we saw them coming in, we regrouped ourselves … I’m happy that we found ourselves in a position where we can actually finish strongly The visitors scored another three unanswered goals to go up 7-3, but Chawane’s charges hit back to make it 10-10 before Ngubane put the home side 11-10 ahead again. Goal keep Juanita van Tonder and goal defence Sanmarie Visser, the player of the match, turned their section of the court into a fortress, halting attacks and stealing the ball.
Visser and wing defence Jamie Golob were also great on the counters, linking with Chawane, Mathe and Ngubane to produce quick interplays, confusing their opponents and opening up channels to get the ball to Streutker. They were worth their 16-12 lead after the first quarter. England, who beat New Zealand in one of three Tests in November, were unable to clear the deficit in the second quarter, which ended with the score on 29-25. South Africa could have led by more at halftime, but threw away a couple of good chances.
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