Jamaica take on England this weekend, in the Horizon Series, after winning the inaugural 2024 Horizon series 2-1, which enabled them to leapfrog the home team and go third in the world rankings.
The 2025 series was originally meant to consist of four fixtures, with the first two matches in Jamaica in early December, followed by two games in England. But, due to the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa across the Caribbean, both country’s organisations came to the decision to cancel the first two matches in Kingston - with the remaining two games at London's Copper Box Arena, as originally planned.
With less than a year to go until the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, the Horizon Series provides crucial game time for both nations. The Vitality Roses go into the meetings on the back of a 2-1 series defeat last month by New Zealand, who are ranked second and won the opening match 61-58.
The Vitality Roses’ thrilling triumph in the second game, saw player of the match Helen Housby scored 23 points, including the first and last goals, to level the series. But in the series decider, the Sunshine Girls came out on touch in a 55-49 victory.
Vitality Roses’ head coach, Jess Thirly, said: "The quality of who you play is always so important, it's got to have real integrity as well.
"I think when you play a series, every team has got a couple of marquee players or styles of players that we may find difficult to replicate back home in our training environment.” Jamaica’s head coach, Sasher Gaye Henry-Wright, added: "We are in no pressure facing England; we are talking about performances, we are talking about goals.
"This is the best team we can put together right now, and we are very happy that we could put a team together despite not having our senior and experienced players.
