Scottish Thistles star aims to showcase talents at World Cup in Cape Town

Niamh McCall has “the mongrel inside of her” to show the world how good she and Scottish Thistles are at the netball World Cup in South Africa.

And the Strathclyde Sirens star says the sky is the limit to what Thistles can achieve in Cape Town at the tournament, which runs from July 28 to August 6.

Scotland start their Pool B matches against Malawi on July 28, with games against Barbados and England in the following days as they look to progress.

By her own admission, Strathaven star McCall didn’t show her capabilities as Scotland finished ninth at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, and is hungry to rectify that.

“We are definitely looking to progress,” said McCall. “In our group you only have to win one game to progress to the next stage, and that’s something that we’re more than capable of doing.

“We have that pressure on ourselves as a team, but also individually, to step up and perform.

“I don’t think I showed what I can do at all at the Commonwealth Games and I came away from it really quite disappointed.

“I’ve got the mongrel inside of me to really show the world what I’m capable of, and what we’re capable of as a team, so it’s really exciting.

“The sky is the limit for us.

“If you ask [vice-captain] Emily Nicholl, she would go for gold, but I think as long as we perform and we know we’re performing well, we will be happy.

“We will be going for wins in some of the games, but we will be happy with our performances if we do our own job and show people what we can do.”

McCall, 23, says enjoying the World Cup is also important, and she hopes that having all the focus on netball will be a huge difference from Birmingham 2022.

“At the Commonwealth Games you’ll pass by fans who probably won’t know who you are, unless