Woo Hoo!  The RN won again!  Wow what a night it was but let us start as always from the beginning!

It was a very early start this morning as the B team had a game at 0800.  We all got up and as usual the venue was all locked when we got there.  We must remember to stop arriving early!  If our game starts at 0800 it is usually 0830 in Carribean time!

The game in the morning was against X-Ceed and so Lyn decided to use it as a training session for the B team; X-Ceed are very good and realistically they would easily beat us.  We tried to conserve our energy during the game as we knew we had to play again later in the day.  However, it is difficult to go on court and not put up a good fight so we came off just as tired as we had been in previous games!  It was a good game though, and it was Marie Leonard's first game of the tournament.  She played really well considering she has only just joined us and we enjoyed playing the game with her on court.  Well done Marie!!  We lost the game 66-16, but as always we drew some positives.  The 3rd quarter was our best and we really had them fighting so that was what we focussed on for our game later.

We got back to the hotel pretty tired but we had an important thing to do!  It was Sam Dugmore's birthday so we presented her with a cake and sang happy birthday.  We had a party planned for after the games so the celebrations at this point were a little subdued (apart from launching her into the pool from her sunbed - purely to wish her happy birthday of course!)

Well, we then travelled to the venue for our games.  HMS Iron Duke had just arrived in St Lucia so a number of the ship's company came and supported us - thank you guys, it was really appreciated and helped a lot.  So, you can imagine the atmosphere, and the flags were waving!

The A team played first and they were against Avengers.  We hadnt played them before so it was difficult to tell how the match would go.  It got off to a slow start with the A team losing the quarter 8-13, however they continued to fight and by the end of the second quarter the score wasx 15-21.  Avengers were putting on the pressure and playing some good netball but the Navy A team turned on the heat and fought hard to bring the score to 23-25 at the end of the third quarter.  The crowd support was amazing and the cheers when the navy scored seemed to echo in the hall for ages after.  Not long into the final quarter the Navy levelled the score and then managed to creep ahead.  Avengers fought back but could not break ahead and the final whistle saw the Navy A beating them by one goal at 34-33.  Iron Duke's support was fantastic and certainly gave us the boost we needed after the second quarter.  It was a great game to watch and a great game to play.  Well done A team and another win for the navy!

The B team played next, and they were against Shamrock who had beaten them before.  We knew Shamrock would be good and we thought that if we managed to break their defence we could be in with a chance.  However, their athleticism and power was too much for us and we struggled to keep the ball away from thier shooters.  With their high success rate when shooting we had to admit defeat and used the rest of the match to work on our weaknesses ready for our next games.  We lost the match 62-16 and were extremely tired afterwards, feeling the pressure of 3 games in a very short space of time.

The B team lost but the A team won and so there was definitely reason to celebrate.  Dont forget we still had to celebrate Sam's birthday so we dressed up in our posh frocks and hit the town (or rather the few bars in Rodney Bay).  Iron Duke's ship's company were out in the town so we joined them for some beers to celebrate the Navy's 2nd win. 

We are improving every day and beginning to adapt to the Carribean way of playing netball - who knows what will happen over the next few days.  Please keep watching and supporting, love to you all.