{"id":630463,"date":"2025-12-13T16:54:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T16:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/630463\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T16:54:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T16:54:22","slug":"england-dominate-jamaica-in-series-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/630463\/","title":{"rendered":"England dominate Jamaica in series opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>England produced a clinical display to beat a depleted Jamaica side 80-37 at Copper Box Arena on Saturday in the opening game of their two-match series.<\/p>\n<p>The hosts started positively and held a comfortable 23-point advantage over the visitors at half-time as captain Fran Williams, who was named player of the match, led by example.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Eleanor Cardwell continued her recovery from a serious knee injury, while Natalie Metcalf played for the first time since having a baby seven months ago.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The girls make it so easy coming into camp, which just makes it easy when you get on court. It felt really connected,&#8221; Cardwell told BBC Sport:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I just love playing games of netball and I&#8217;ve not played many this year so it&#8217;s really nice.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There has been a lot of crying this year. I didn&#8217;t realise I had this much mental toughness so it&#8217;s been hard but I have learned so much on this journey and I think it&#8217;s going to make me a better netballer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Jamaica won the inaugural 2024 Horizon series 2-1, which enabled them to leapfrog England and go third in the world rankings.<\/p>\n<p>The 2025 series was due to consist of four fixtures &#8211; two in Jamaica in early December and two in England &#8211; but the matches in Kingston were cancelled following the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/netball\/videos\/c62nnn0yjl4o?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Byahoo.north.america%5D-%5Blink%5D-%5Bsport%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa.;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Members of the Jamaica team helped in the relief effort, handing out care packages, and have been unable to train as a whole squad.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>England Netball will donate \u00a31 from every Horizon Series ticket sold to Netball Jamaica&#8217;s chosen charity, World Central Kitchen, and has also announced fans will be able to contribute to the British Red Cross&#8217; Disaster Fund.<\/p>\n<p>But with less than a year to go until the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, the Horizon Series provides crucial game time for both nations.<\/p>\n<p>They will meet again for a second match on Sunday at 14:00 GMT with the action available to watch on BBC iPlayer and on the BBC Sport website.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765644862_43_\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England produced a clinical display to beat a depleted Jamaica side 80-37 at Copper Box Arena on Saturday&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[748,195132,393,195131,195134,4884,195133,47356,195135,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-630463","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-eleanor-cardwell","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-england-netball","12":"tag-fran-williams","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-horizon-series","15":"tag-jamaica","16":"tag-natalie-metcalf","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}