England Roses followed up last week’s 55-45 victory over Jamaica’s Sunshine Girls with a comprehensive 66-47 victory on Saturday (December 4) to take a 2-0 lead in the three-match series.

Buoyed by a vociferous crowd packed in to the Motor Point Area in Nottingham, England led 21-13 at the end of the opening quarter and outscored Jamaica 14-6 in the second stanza to hold a commanding 35-19 lead at half-time.

Jamaica held the hosts 14-14 in the third but England again outscored Jamaica 17-14 in the final quarter for the impressive victory.

The bane of the Sunshine Girls was once again turnovers and unforced errors as England routinely cut off routes to Jamaica’s shooters. At the other end, England nullified the impact of Jamaica’s defensive players.

“It was a fantastic start by us, and it was really something we wanted to focus on going into this game. I think we really brought it to the Jamaicans today and it was really nice to see everyone get on court,” said England goal-attack Eleanor Cardwell afterwards.”

“It was really nice to get the start at shooter and build the combination with Jo [Herten] and obviously Nat [Haythornthwaite] in front. It was just a great start; we’d been building all week in training and we’re now ready to hit it hard again tomorrow.

“I think we needed to go out hard and be clinical with our ball. We knew we needed to play simple netball and get the Jamaicans on the back foot – when they’re on the back foot, that’s when we can really push forward and get more and more goals in and make them feel less confident about themselves.”

Jamaica will try to get on the board when the final match gets underway today.