Hello again everyone!  Well here we are at the end of day 5 and it has been great day even if a little emotional! 

We all arose at a reasonable hour and had breakfast at the hotel.  We then did some more training whilst Arty, Kate and Lyn went to the Tournament meeting to find out the routine for the day ahead.  The training was good and blew away the cobwebs from the night before!  When Arty, Kate and Lyn arrived back a couple of hours later we found out that their meeting only took 40 minutes - the rest of the time was waiting for it to start!  That is the Carribean way - everything is very laid back and they work on a different time schedule to us.  We are always five minutes early and they wouldnt dream of being less than 10 minutes late!  It is something we are getting used to here!

We all had a big lunch ready for the games later in the day and many of us bought sandwiches to take along, knowing that we would not get back to the hotel until gone 9pm.  The coach picked us up at 1415 and we made our way to the tournament venue which turned out to be a huge hangar type structure with no air conditioning.  At least it was indoors though so protected us from the sun - and the rain.

The tournament started and all the teams marched in behind the St Lucian Police Band.  It was a good ceremony if a little long winded.  We were welcomed with cheers and words of support and the atmosphere was building up throughout.  With pledges to obey rules and play fairly, the tournament was declared open and the Navy A team as we are known in the tournament began to warm-up for the first match. 

Their opposition was a team called X-Ceed which came 3rd in the tournament last year.  They were all very tall and looked extremely athletic - boy could they jump!  Navy A were put under pressure from the first whistle and this affected the girls.  It was a shock how fast and aggressive the game had started and the quarter ended 5-15.  However, had the pressure not been so great the 9 chances we created would have been converted and we would have had a much smaller goal deficit.  We had to get focussed and raise our game.  The game continued to increase in speed and their athleticism and jumps were immense!  We were averaging a 7 goal score rate each quarter and they were averaging in excess of 10.  We could easily see why they had come 3rd last year and knew we had to just play our best game.  We did play our best, and the positives we could draw from that gave us hope despite our 26-60 loss.  We know that we have a chance against the other teams in the tournament so that is what we are now focussing on.

The Navy B team had once again undergone a slight re-structure which is always risky so close to the start of a tournament but it was necessary against these teams.  Navy B faced Digicel Elite; last year's tournament winners!  We knew a win was not possible, but decided to give ourselves goals for each quarter instead.  That way, if we succeeded in these goals and improved our own game in these positions we could have a chance against the other teams in the tournament.  We played the best game of our tour so far.  The combination worked and we gelled 100% as a team.  Despite our losses each quarter we felt good and our standard of netball increased as the game went on.  We didnt expect to score goals against this team, and we expected them to score way past the 100 mark; with 5 internationals on their team (2 of them shooters) that was a realistic expectation.  However, we held our own and beat our expectations.  We lost the game 13-87 but we played with all our hearts and we played well. 

OK so we lost; but the netball here is different.  We couldnt understand the RAF and Army when they came here last year but now we understand.  We wont ever match the likes of X-Ceed and Digicell but we can learn a great deal from them and we can improve our own game.  We still have 6 matches each to play and if you keep your fingers crossed and we keep improving as we have been then who knows what position we can come!