It’s also World Cup year for Netball
It's not just rugby and cricket lovers who can look forward to the different sport's World Cup tournaments this year. The Netball World Cup also takes place in 2015.
Sydney Olympic Park will host the international netball’s pinnacle event – the Netball World Cup (NWC) later this year.
The event is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to see the world’s best netballers go head to head. For the first time, the competition will be held over 10 days, and will see top-ranked teams fight it out for this prestigious prise.
The NWC is a celebration of the continued growth and impact of netball globally with this 14th edition of the event set to be the best and biggest the sport has ever seen. After rigorous qualifying events across the five regions – Europe, Oceania, America, Asia and Africa – the International Netball Federation (INF) has confirmed the 16 nations who will compete at the Netball World Cup Sydney 2015.
The tournament will take place from 7-16 August and 64 games will be played over 10 days to find the 2015 Netball world champion. The top six nations automatically qualified when the INF world rankings were confirmed in July. These were Australia, New Zealand, England, Jamaica, Malawi and South Africa.
As a result of the regional qualifiers, they will be joined by Wales, Scotland, Fiji, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Brabados, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Zambia. Zambia, who defeated higher ranked African nations, will be competing in only their second world cup since the tournament began in 1963. In Europe, England is one of four nations (Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica) to have played in every world cup.
Wales and Scotland also have a consistent record at the event, competing in 13 of the 14 editions of the tournament (missing the 1967 and 2011 cups respectively). In Asia, Sri Lanka upset higher ranked nations to join Singapore as the two qualifying nations last month while Fiji, Samoa, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago have been preparing for Sydney 2015 after qualifying earlier in 2014 at events in the Cook Islands (Oceania Region) and Canada (Americas Region).
South Africa was fortunate with the draw for the pool stage and with a little luck the Proteas should qualify easily for the quarterfinals. South Africa was drawn with Malawi, Singapore and Sri Lanka in Pool C
