Hosts England, holders Australia, New Zealand and South Africa all ensured that they topped their preliminaries stage one groups with their third successive victories at the Vitality Netball World Cup today.
The group winners, along with the second and third-placed finishers in each of the four groups, now move forward to Group F or G, where the tournament’s top 12 teams will continue their battle to secure a semi-final berth.
The competition’s remaining teams: Sri Lanka, Singapore, Fiji and Samoa, now form their own group – Group E – where they will play in a round-robin format to determine who will contest the matches to decide 13th and 14th place, and 15th and 16th place.
For the teams in Group F (Australia, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Malawi and Barbados) and Group G (Jamaica, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, England, Uganda and Scotland), previous results against teams within their new groups will carry over, ensuring that the teams who topped the preliminaries stage one groups go into the next phase with an advantage.
The top two teams in both groups will qualify for the semi-finals, while the remaining eight will contest matches to determine their overall placing (5th-12th) depending on their finishing position in Group F or G.
Further information on the competition format is available here.