The Malawi national netball team, nicknamed "The Queens", represent Malawi in international netball competitions.
History
Malawi have played in six World Netball Championships, famously finishing fifth in 2007.[1] The Queens are coached by Peace Chawinga Kalua who replaced Whyte Mlilima, who was appointed as caretaker head coach after former coach late Griffin Saenda had to withdraw from the team on medical grounds.[2] As of November 2022,[3] the team are sixth[3] on the World Netball Rankings.
In 2012 they competed in the Fast5 tournament in Auckland, where they have had several historic results including wins over Australia and England, and finished in 5th place, just narrowly missing out on the finals. This followed a draw against Australia in the 2010 Edition. Airtel Malawi is a significant financial donor of the Malawi Queens, having sponsored their trip to Auckland for the Fast5 World Series in 2014 to a sum of K6 M.[4] The current Netball Association of Malawi (NAM) president is Abigail Shariff.
In 2022, Malawi Competed at the Commonwealth Games, in Birmingham. By virtue of its position in the World Netball Rankings (as of 28 July 2021), Malawi qualified for the tournament. Partial fixtures were announced in November 2021, then updated with the remaining qualifiers in March 2022. Malawi finished fourth in their group at the competition behind hosts England, New Zealand and Uganda.
In 2023, Malawi took part in the Netball World Cup in Cape Town. Malawi finished second in Group B, winning matches against Scotland and Barbados to qualify for the second round. In the second round in Group F, Malawi won further matches against Tonga and Fiji and finished third in the group behind England and Australia, thus failing to proceed to the knockout section of the tournament. Following placement matches, Malawi finished 7th in the tournament. Joyce Mvula was the team's highest goal scorer, and the fourth highest overall in the tournament, with 194 goals.