This weekend saw the Sirens return to the Algarve for our first competion in the international Algarve 7s. A 2-day sports festival with over 70 international sports teams and more than 2000 athletes participating in Rugby, Netball, Field Hockey and Golf, this was always going to be our most challenging tournament to date.
Day 1 was particularly gruelling as we faced more established teams with much more match experience, but we took some tough games on the chin, supporting each other. This is only our third ever tournament as a team, and until there are more teams locally, our experience of match play will be limited - so this was a great opportunity to learn lots to bring back to our training sessions in Óbidos.
Day 2 saw us compete for the Bowl trophy with more similarly experienced teams and we quickly found our feet.
We felt there were some contraversial calls and unfortunately we took an injury to our Centre player (rest up Anna!) but our shooting was on form and we held a strong defensive play where we needed to. There was plenty of friendly rivalry from our last tournament (shout out to the Lagos Fireballs - we're coming for you next year!).
Despite the unrelenting Algarve heat, there was lots of drawing on our inner sparkle across the day and we were proud of our 2 wins and kept our heads held high throughout.
It was another fabulous opportunity to meet up with some fellow netballers from Portugal, the UK and Ireland and we hope to arrange some friendly games in the future as a result. We played hard on and off the court and we leave the Algarve for the second time this summer with tired legs, a lot of experience and lots of new words.... ;-)
(And of course no tournament would be complete without a fully kitted up jump in the pool!)
Come and join us next time round!
