CLAIRE Brownie is under no illusions about how important this weekend’s World Cup qualifying tournament in Perth is.
The Scotland netball captain has been playing at the highest level for a decade, but there are few years that have been quite as important in her career as 2018 will be.
The Commonwealth Games are now less than three months away but for now, Brownie’s priority is making sure that her team secures qualification for the 2019 World Cup.
This evening, Scotland begin their World Cup qualifying tournament campaign against Wales before taking on Northern Ireland on Sunday.
Only two of the three teams will qualify for the tournament and with Northern Ireland ranked eight in the world, Wales ninth and Scotland eleventh, the Scots are the underdogs.
But Brownie is in confident mood. “I’m really looking forward to it – we’ve done a lot of hard work leading up to this and we’ve had a lot of pre-season games so I think we’re ready,” he said. “It’s always been a good rivalry between us and Northern Ireland and Wales so there’s going to be some very tough matches.
“Anyone can beat anyone this weekend, that’s the beauty of this tournament and with qualification for the World Cup being at stake, that obviously makes getting the win even more important. And we’re also looking to use these matches as an opportunity to show how good a team Scotland have become.”
Brownie, who captains the Scotland team, has every right to be confident. At Netball Europe last October, Scotland defeated Wales and lost by only one point to Northern Ireland, which is why Brownie is optimistic that her team can come out on top.
“I really do believe that if we bring our best game, we can beat anyone,” she said. “We’re in a really good place – we’ve got a real mix in our team in terms of experience, but the younger players have stepped up massively, especially in the last year and so things are looking very good.
“We’ve got so much strength-in-depth in our team and, if we play our best netball, I’m confident that we’ll come out the winners.”
Scotland have an extra boost courtesy of being on home soil. Tickets for the tournament sold out almost immediately and Brownie is sure that having the home crowd behind them will provide the extra push they need,
But she knows that the team cannot allow themselves to get too carried away with thoughts of getting to the World Cup. “I love playing at home – it’s the best thing,” she said. “Having a sold-out crowd for both our games is amazing. And the tickets selling out so quickly shows what’s happened to netball in this country in recent years and that’s so exciting.
“We can’t get away from the bigger picture as we all are aware that World Cup qualification is at stake and we know what we want the end result to be but when it comes to taking to the court, that’s when we’ll really be focusing on the processes and what we need to do to play well.
“It’s about our performances more than what anyone else does. We need to make sure that we keep to our Scotland style – we’ll want to set the tempo and control the game and if we do that, we should get the results we want.”
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