The five teams to qualify automatically for the Netball World Cup 2019 have been confirmed as Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, South Africa and Malawi, following release of the International Netball Federation (INF) world rankings today.
Following their historic Commonwealth Games gold medal, England – who qualify for next summer’s tournament as host nation – have moved ahead of New Zealand in the world rankings for the first time and will be seeded second for the tournament.
The annual update to the INF world rankings confirms the top six seeds for next summer’s tournament – which takes place from 12-21 July 2019 at Liverpool’s Echo Arena – as:
First seed: Australia
Second seed: England
Third seed: New Zealand
Fourth seed: Jamaica
Fifth seed: South Africa
Sixth seed: Malawi
The release of the tournament seedings means organisers have confirmed the match schedule for the top six seeded teams for the Preliminaries Stage One group phase of the competition, which can be found here.
The automatic qualifiers join Northern Ireland, Scotland, Samoa and Fiji, who all qualified through their respective regional qualifying tournaments earlier in 2018.
The final list of qualified teams will be confirmed officially by the INF in September 2018 with two further teams being seeded according to world rankings and the remaining eight teams drawn into groups for the Preliminaries Stage One phase of the competition.
Six places at the tournament are still up for grabs in the remaining three regions – Africa, Americas and Asia – and will be confirmed at regional qualifying tournaments held in August and September.
Tickets for the event are set to go on pre-sale to England Netball members from 3-12 July and to anyone who signs up for the event website form 17-27 July, before going on general sale in September 2018.
Courtesy of Netball World Cup 2019
