NEW: Gems date England in high-stakes friendly

Tadious Manyepo

Sports Reporter

The Gems will wrap up their tour of the United Kingdom with a high-stakes international friendly against England in Manchester this afternoon.

The national netball team have been in the UK for the past two weeks where they participated in the four-team Celtic Cup tournament which ran from Thursday last week and ended on Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland.

They finished third after beating Northern Ireland in the third-place play-off in a contest that was eventually won by Wales, with the hosts coming up second.

Before their Celtic Cup sojourn began, the Gems played two warm-up games against Wales in Cardiff and lost both.

But they wanted the invaluable exposure, which they will also be looking for when they play the Vitality Roses today.

England, who finished as the runners-up in last year’s World Cup in South Africa, are ranked the second-best team in the world and Zimbabwe will be looking to gauge themselves against such an efficient opponent.

This will be the second time that the Gems will be playing against the Vitality Roses in as many years after the two also played a preparatory friendly in Cape Town ahead of the World Cup in July last year.