Malawi Queens qualify automatically for 2019 World Cup in Liverpool

Malawi national netball team have qualified automatically for the 2019 Liverpool Netball World Cup following an improvement on their International Netball Federation (INF) rankings released on July 1.

According to reports,  Malawi Queens gained more points from their performance at the last Commonwealth Games after beating New Zealand who were by then world’s number 2 on INF rankings.

Initially, Malawi had ended on 7th position at the Commonwealth Games which were held at Gold Coast in Australia but now they are 6th.

This means that the results of Africa Netball Championship in which will take place from August 13-19 in Lusaka, Zambia will not affect Malawi as well as 5th-placed South Africa participation because of their respective superior INF World rankings.

Other automatic qualifiers are the hosts England, Australia (1st), New Zealand (3rd) and Jamaica (4th).

Other African countries will  have to fight for the 2019 Netball World Cup qualifications spots in Lusaka during the 7th Africa Netball Championship, whose defending champions are Uganda with Malawi as runners-up.

Netball Association of Malawi (Nam) president Khungikile Matiya, said they are all geared for participarion and they have already submitted their budget to Malawi National Council of Sports for funding since each country shall be responsible for their own transport, accommodation, meals and financial contribution for umpires.

“All measures have been taken care of for the tournament,” Matiya said.

Also on the agenda in Lusaka shall be the African Netball federation’s annual general meeting as well as workshops on governance and administration facilitated by the INF.

A letter of invitation from African Netball said countries need to be paid up members of African Netball and INF to be eligible for the competition’s participation.

Malawi last hosted the African Championship in 2013.

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