Trainer calls on critics to recognise players efforts

The Fijian Under-21 netball players have to improve on their fitness prior to playing in July’s World Youth Netball Championship in Botswana.

Trainer Hendry Elder said yesterday that after the build-up matches against Australia, New Zealand and Samoa, he is trying to build on their basic fitness programme again.

“For the girls fitness I think we are still far off from where we are supposed to be,” Elder told SUNsports.

“While our fitness was a turning factor it helped us perform against New Zealand and Australia so when you look at the score line it was quite a respectable score.

“These teams are the best in the world and compared to our girls who are inexperienced and not exposed to higher level of training or to top level facility they really played well.  All we can do is work on what we have and try to improve on those things as we are limited in many ways. We will always be struggling against the big teams but the score line like that is very encouraging and I attribute that to a lot of hard work and sacrifice from these young ladies.

“No one sees the hard work these girls go through behind the scene as a lot of people criticised them and it hurts that those people don’t recognise their hard work.”

He said they are now going back to the books as to how they can improve on their fitness.

“I’m building on their endurance and strength base before we go back to specialisation of those areas. It is important to establish that prior to going into our power development, maximum strength and speed because if we don’t do that what is going to happen is that the players will injure themselves and we won’t be hitting our target at the appropriate time so establishing that foundation first is important.”

Elder said this would help them move up to the next level. He indicated that so far everything has been done within eight weeks of training with the girls while head coach Vicki Wilson concentrated on the technical side.

“So we are trying to get all the girls’ fitness up to par and the fitness test that I conduct periodically was very important as I try to measure their level of fitness and also to push up their style of training,” he added.

Edited by Leone Cabenatabua

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