Netball World Cup 2023: No part-time 'excuse' for Wales in South Africa

Wales will not use the "excuse" of being semi-professional in their Netball World Cup opener against hosts South Africa, says captain Nia Jones.

On 28 July in Cape Town the Welsh Feathers will take on a Proteas side which saw 24 players take up full-time professional contracts in April 2022.

That is in stark contrast to the part-time status of the Welsh squad.

"We are semi-professional when we are with our domestic clubs and that season finished in June," said Jones.

"So the small income that some of the players do get will have stopped a couple of weeks before this [pre-World Cup] block even began.

"We get people coming in to training from being a psychologist all day, or a teacher or a nurse.

"After finishing a 9-to-5 most people can't wait to get in to their pyjamas, but we have to be at our peak energy and be razor sharp in terms of the level of professionalism and behaviours that we bring from seven o'clock until 10 o'clock at night. Then some of our girls have to travel two hours back home.

"But we don't want to play the victims, we work really hard on not using anything as an excuse, because we know there are all sorts of teams at the World Cup who are also going through barriers of their own."

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Wales confirmed their place at the tournament, qualifying for their first World Cup since 2015, with an unbeaten European qualifying campaign.

After playing hosts South Africa on Friday, Wales will face Jamaica and Sri Lanka in Group C.

"We are up against some teams who have been full-time professionals for a number of years so it is going to be really tough," Jones said.

"Excitement is the overwhelming feeling. We've had a pretty long and intense block together for the last six weeks, where we've been in six days a week,. [There have been] some long days on the weekends, in at nine and leaving at six, and really expending everything we've got physically and emotionally to really gel the group together in a short amount of time.

"We've waited so long and we qualified in brilliant fashion. We won five out of five games in qualifying so we don't want to be just taking part, we've got strong aspirations to be climbing the world rankings.

'"We've been cruising around eighth, ninth or 10th in the last few years and we need to be playing some of these top teams more often, that would be massive for our calendar. We can't just wait every four years to be playing teams and stars we've never faced before.

"Anything inside the top eight for us in this tournament would be a huge achievement. There's a huge contrast of styles and we are taking some inexperienced people as well, so it'll be awesome for them and great for the future of our team.

"The fact we have to play seven games in eight days is a challenge in itself but we definitely have to be picking up some wins in there as well."

Wales are playing at their first World Cup since 2015

Growing the game

Jones hopes the boom in interest in women's sport, seen by the huge crowds at the football World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, and the worldwide coverage of the tournament will help propel netball into the mainstream.

"If you can't see it, you can't be it," added Jones, who has also represented Wales in football.

"When people ask me [about my] female role models growing up, I am embarrassed to say that I struggle to think of some. I used to watch Thierry Henry and David Beckham and think they were super cool.

"Now, the fact that young girls have female athletes to look up to on the TV, that they're seeing constantly, it really is massive."

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