Silver Ferns crush Diamonds to claim Quad Series netball title

World netball champions Australia will be on a mission in next month’s four-Test trans-Tasman series.

Australia’s Emily Mannix defends against New Zealand’s Te Paea Selby-Rickit during their Quad Series match in Invercargill.

World Australia will be on a mission in next month’s four-Test trans-Tasman series after copping a rare thumping from their archrivals.

Beaten four days earlier by England, New Zealand shocked the Diamonds with their intensity and dominated throughout to claim the Quad Series title on percentage with a 57-47 upset win in Invercargill yesterday.

With the Commonwealth Games looming next April, next month’s Constellation Cup clashes between the two teams in Auckland, Christchurch, Adelaide and Sydney take on added significance as a battle for psychological supremacy.

There had been fears New Zealand netball would suffer when the trans-Tasman club competition was scrapped in favour of separate national competitions this year. But those fears were set aside as the Diamonds appeared nonplussed by the Silver Ferns’ zone defence and energy, and a high penalty count also hurt the visitors as New Zealand led 18-10 at the first break.

New Zealand’s young, 192cm goalkeeper Kelly Jury caused havoc in the Australian shooting circle, with the Diamonds having to rethink their feed into captain Caitlin Bassett.

“It’s who takes that ascendancy psychologically in that first quarter and we played into their hands, we talked about not doing that but unfortunately we did,” Diamonds coach Lisa Alexander said. “We know about all our strategies against the zone, we simply just didn’t do it.”

With New Zealand still ahead 31-24 at halftime, Alexander rang the changes. Tegan Philip was introduced at goal attack, Kim Ravaillion back into centre and Liz Watson moved out to wing attack while Caitlin Thwaites came on at goal shooter.

But Bassett admitted her team simply did not handle the Silver Ferns’ pressure well enough.

“Tonight I think we lost our connection,” she said. “We didn’t play as a team, we were doing too much individual work and not enough unit work. They split us apart. They exposed that for us, put us into individual units, we didn’t step up and get back together again.”

AAP