Ladies’ team swap netball shirts for twin sets

A woman’s netball team is celebrating beating odds of two million-to-one after every single player to fall pregnant gave birth to twins.

Three of ten ladies making up Brannel netball club in St Austell, Cornwall, have already had twins and now a fourth teammate is expecting a pair.

Wing attack Laura Lincoln, 31, started the trend in 2010 when she gave birth to boys Sebastian and Zachary. Two years later centre Hannah Barclay, 29, followed up with a pair of her own, Riley and Wesley.

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Next in line was Ali Bell, 29, who gave birth to twin girls Ayla and Bella eight months ago.

And now the team’s former coach, Andrea Semmonds, 29, is six months pregnant and is due to have twins herself.

None of the ladies had given birth before and the chances of them all having twins was approximately 1 in 2,140,000.

There are so many babies to look after that the team has taken a hiatus from the Cornwall League while the ladies focus on motherhood.

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Ms Lincoln, who delivered her now three-year-olds boys on November 4, 2010, said: “There must have been something in the half-time water or the oranges.”

Her teammate Ms Barclay, who had her two boys on June 6, 2012, said: “When you look at the statistics it does seem a bit crazy.

“We keep laughing about it and say the rest who are yet to have children are doomed.

“My twins have got an awesome throw on them and when Andrea’s arrive we will certainly have enough to make a netball team.”

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Miss Semmonds, who founded the team, is expecting identical twins with partner Lewis Burnett at the end of June.

She said: “It’s absolutely mad –the chances of us all having twins are so slim.”

Mathematician Phil Last said so many twins among such a small group was extremely rare, adding: “The chance of four sets of twins, of which one is identical, being born within a team of seven potential mothers is approximately 1 in 2,140,000.”

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