New Zealand drawn in Pool B for GC2018

The New Zealand Netball team has been drawn in Pool B for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games, April 4-15, 2018.

They will be joined in Pool B by England, Malawi, Wales, Scotland and Uganda.

New Zealand will face Uganda in its opening match on Thursday 5 April – view full schedule

The draw ceremony was undertaken on Wednesday morning on Surfers Paradise, overseen and sanctioned by INF. The ceremony saw the bottom six ranked teams randomly drawn into two pools in order to determine the match schedule for the preliminary round robin stage of the competition.

They joined the top six ranked teams who were placed into the two pools in a snaking pattern, according to the INF World Ranking list as of July 1, 2017.

New Zealand will play every team in Pool B during the preliminary round at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre from April 5-12, before the event culminates in the finals matches at the Coomera Indoor Sports Centre on April 14-15, 2018.

Uganda have already emerged as one of the early fairytale stories of GC2018 after qualifying for the Netball competition at the Commonwealth Games for the first time.

Uganda leapt from 13th to ninth in the recent INF World Ranking List after defeating Malawi to win this year’s Africa Netball Cup.

Each team will comprise a maximum of 12 athletes, with a total of 144 athletes participating in the Netball competition.

International Netball Federation President, the Hon. Molly Rhone said the excitement and anticipation is already mounting.

“We are confident that the GC2018 Netball Competition is going to be a fantastic showcase for our sport and a thrilling world class event,” Rhone said.

“We look forward to seeing our amazing athletes take to the court in April, to winning new friends for our sport, and to the success we know this competition will be for Netball.”