Malawi beat Tonga for the second time in three days to claim 7th spot at the Netball World Cup 2023 in Cape Town.
After the 56-51 victory on Thursday, the Queens got the better of the Tala's on Sunday with a 64-54 victory.
Tonga got proceedings underway in this high-stakes game. Centre Hulita Veve immediately made her presence felt with a few tip touches. She was up against Malawi’s Takondwa Lwazi who had a string of strong performances in Cape Town.
The Tonga players created open spaces to drive the ball into their goal circle, resulting in a three-goal lead halfway through the opening 15 minutes. At the other end of the court, defenders Kelea Iongi and Lose Fainga'anuku were making life difficult for the Malawi shooters.
A strong counter-attack by Malawi pulled things back, Joyce Mvula and Mwai Kumwenda made sure of their attempts at goal and the Queens then first levelled matters before putting their team two up. The teams went into the first break with Malawi leading 17-16.
The only changes to the starting line-ups at the start of the second quarter were from Tonga with Salote Taufa coming on as centre and Mo'onia Gerrard as goal defence.
Malawi considerably upped the speed of play at the start of the second quarter. Mvula moved out of the circle more to collect passes from her attacking players. It proved risky at times though as Tonga got hands in the way on a couple of occasions.
Malawi enjoyed the majority of the possession and it showed on the scoreboard. It took the Queens eight minutes to build up a healthy gap of five goals with their shooters only missing two attempts between them.
The first change for Malawi came just before the end of the second quarter with Jane Dambo replacing Grace Mwafulirwa on wing defence. It added even more pressure on the Tongan attack and the Queens went into the halftime break 33-29 ahead.
The battle between centres Lwazi and Veve continued in the third quarter. Both have been standout players for their teams throughout the tournament, both on attack and defence.
With more structured play and defensively also a stronger performance, Tonga started closing the gap to just one goal after seven minutes in the penultimate quarter of the match. The Tala outscored the Queens in the third quarter (15-12) to keep their hopes of an important victory alive.
The Malawi team remained largely unchanged as in the fourth quarter the coaching staff stuck with what was working well so far.
In the last seven minutes of the match, Malawi got their hands on more ball to present to the shooting circle and started pulling away. With two minutes left on the clock, their lead was ten goals, and a 7th spot at the World Cup in Cape Town guaranteed.
Most valuable player: Mwai Kumwenda (Malawi)
Quarter scores: 17-16 / 33-29 / 45-44 / 64-54