England Roses head coach Tracey Neville believes her side are heading in right direction
World Cup in 2019 remains Neville's focus
Monday 5 December 2016 09:37, UK
England Roses head coach Tracey Neville claims her side are heading in the right direction, despite suffering a heartbreaking Test series defeat to Jamaica.
The Sunshine Girls won the deciding winner-takes-all clash at Coventry's Ricoh Arena 64-57 to leave the home side frustrated.
But Neville remains optimistic that England are making progress and they will be ready in three years' time when the World Cup heads to Liverpool.
"There have been some excellent displays of attack and defence from the team and we are still in the early stages building into that World Cup in 2019 and that's what our only focus can be at this stage," Neville told Sky Sports.
"I actually think we're progressing well. We're getting into a situation now where we're going to have a different group of players coming in. It's a great opportunity to look at them to play at the world's best, but we going to have to start nailing it.
"During this Test series there were aspects where we did nail it as a group, but we're obviously have three players missing who are playing in Australia, so an injection of them and that will lead us into the next stage which will be the Commonwealth Games."
Neville blamed the disconnect between defence and attack for England's lack of creativity as they lost the momentum at the start of the final quarter.
"I think in the first half at times our defence and attack didn't seem to get it together at the same time and I think that put us on the back foot coming into half time," she said.
"Obviously in the half time team talk I felt our momentum was up and down and I felt we needed momentum as a whole team. We needed more opportunities from our defenders, but we just weren't creating any opportunities for our attackers.
"I think our attackers in that second half were outstanding, but we just needed more and more opportunities.
"As we built that momentum, we went into that last quarter and that first centre pass just absolutely destroyed the momentum and then they took the game back."
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