The Australian Diamonds celebrate winning the 2011 Constellation Cup against New Zealand’s Silver Ferns.
NETBALL
Australia vs New Zealand
In the past two decades, the rivalry between the Australian Diamonds and the New Zealand Silver Ferns has become the stuff of legend. There have been games decided in double-overtime, heartbreaking misses and numerous buzzer-beating goals. The nations have met in the finals of four successive World Championships, with the games decided by an average margin of just two goals. The Diamonds and the Silver Ferns have also met in each of the gold medal matches since netball was first included in the Commonwealth Games, in Malaysia in 1998. The average margin in those games has been only three goals. As veteran News Limited sports journalist Ron Reed wrote in the aftermath of the Diamonds’ win over the Silver Ferns in the 2011 World Championships: ‘[T]he Australian and New Zealand netball teams have developed a rivalry of an intensity that compares with just about anything else in Australian sport, including Ashes cricket.’
The netball rivalry between Australia and New Zealand dates back to 20 August 1938, when the nations met in what is regarded as the first international netball match. The contest took place outdoors on a patch of turf near the Melbourne Zoo. At that stage, the sport was widely known as ‘women’s basketball’, and its rules were yet to be standardised – for instance, matches were contested between teams of seven players in Australia and teams of nine players in New Zealand. Many other discrepancies had developed in other parts of the world since the sport was first played in the late 19th century.
Netball’s origins can indeed be traced back to the invention of basketball by James Naismith in 1891. A Canadian immigrant, Naismith was teaching physical education at a Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) school in Springfield, Massachusetts, and came up with the sport in response to calls for the development of a strenuous indoor game that would keep the local men fit during the region’s bitter winters. The name ‘basketball’ refers to the peach baskets that were used as goals during the early matches at the YMCA gym where Naismith taught.
In the years after basketball was first played, a number of female teachers decided to develop versions of the game that they believed would be better suited to women. In the conservative southern American states, the rules were particularly restrictive, while in the some of the northern states, the regulations were slightly more relaxed. In the late 1890s, an American teacher took one version of women’s basketball to Great Britain, where the sport was soon refined to suit the local tastes.
If you’ve ever watched a game of modern netball, which is played at a blistering pace, and wondered why on earth the sport has been designed to be so hard on players’ knees and ankles, academic Tracy Taylor has the answer. As she explained in an essay titled ‘Gendering Sport: The Development of Netball in Australia’:
Rules were . . . devised to accommodate the restrictive female dress of the day, as women’s long skirts made dribbling the ball and lengthy passes difficult. In consequence, the court was divided into three equal parts, with players based respectively in one of these three sections and no dribbling was permitted. The rules did not permit players to travel the full length of the court as women were still considered frail creatures who were not capable of physical exertion without harm . . . The lower level of strenuous physical activity and absence of any sanctioned body contact was perceived as a distinct advantage for women’s basketball. It was a sport that women could play and still remain graceful and ladylike.
The later introduction of the rule that stipulated players could only handle the ball for three seconds was driven by similar intentions. Basically, netball was designed as a passing game, in which the ball could move up and down the court without the participants breaking into a sweat. In that sense, netball is like the QWERTY keyboard, which was designed to slow down typists in order to prevent jamming of the keys when they worked at speed. These days, people have adapted so that they can type very quickly using a QWERTY keyboard. Similarly, netball’s rules were originally designed to ensure that the players did not have be very athletic, yet it has developed into a highly athletic and entertaining sport.
In the United States, the regulations governing women’s basketball were gradually relaxed, so that today women and men use the same rules (although the state of Iowa sanctioned a form of women’s basketball until 1994). As a result, the sport Australians know today as netball has never taken off in the United States. The refinements to the rules of basketball that led to the creation of netball took place in Great Britain, specifically, at Martina Bergman-Osterberg’s Physical Training College at Dartford, in Kent. As Queenslanders Ian Jobling and Pamela Barham explained in their essay, ‘The Development of Netball and the All-Australia Women’s Basketball Association: 1891–1939’, the size of the ball was reduced ‘to the same dimensions as a regulation football (soccer) to avoid the need for a special ball. Rings were reduced accordingly, to their present size (15 inches or 380 mm diameter). Nets were added and posts were raised to their present height of 10 feet (3.05 metres). Thus, netball in Great Britain was born.’
Netball – under the guise of women’s basketball – arrived in Australia and New Zealand in the early 1900s. (The sport was known as ‘netball’ in Great Britain from 1901, yet in Australia it was not until 1970 that the name ‘women’s basketball’ was replaced. It was a long overdue change, as countless women were by then playing genuine American basketball.) The sport was most likely brought to the southern hemisphere by female teachers who emigrated from Great Britain. As in the rest of the world, the sport was tailored to suit the conservative social conventions of the time.
In her essay, Taylor wrote:
The 1930 minutes of an Executive meeting of the AAWBA [All-Australia Women’s Basketball Association] stated that, ‘our girls should always be well presented and demonstrate good manners in public’. In a 1931 Executive meeting of the AAWBA a motion was passed that required players to be silent during the course of a game. The documented discussion, which accompanied the motion, affirmed that the executive felt that women’s basketball should be designated as a silent game where only the captain was allowed to speak. The Executive stated that they did not think it was ‘lady-like’ for players to shout and carry on while engaging in the sport. Accordingly, the rules of the game were changed to meet expectations about proper conduct of women in a public forum.
It was not until 1960 that a standard set of rules for netball was agreed upon by a range of Commonwealth nations, including Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. This is the key reason why the sport had been around for more than four decades before the first international match was held. Even that inaugural contest between Australia and New Zealand in 1938 took months to organise, due to the bickering over which regulations should govern it. In the end, the Kiwis charitably agreed to travel across the ditch to Melbourne for a match that was held during the All-Australian Women’s Basketball Carnival; the local players, judged to have performed best during the carnival – the All-Australian team – represented Australia.
The New Zealanders also agreed to play under rules that were more familiar to the Aussies. Not only did netball in New Zealand feature nine players per team rather than seven, but the Kiwis also played on larger courts and used a lighter ball than was common in Australia. And these weren’t the only differences. In New Zealand, netball matches began with the type of centre pass that is used in the game today, while matches in Australia began with a centre bounce, a bit like that used in Aussie rules, although on a smaller scale.
So the first international netball match – and the contest that ignited netball’s greatest rivalry – began with the two centres crouching low to the ground as the umpire leaned forward and slammed the ball into the turf. What followed demonstrated the benefit of playing under rules with which you are familiar. Victorian Dot Middleton lunged forward and grabbed the ball, then immediately began to stand up, collecting her unsuspecting New Zealand opponent, Muriel Boswell, in the face and breaking her nose. ‘The Australian girl, her head came up, connected with my nose, and that was the end of my first game,’ Boswell told The Age in 2006.
New Zealand’s afternoon failed to improve; Australia led by 14 goals at half-time, then won 40–11. Nevertheless, the newspaper reports published in the days after the game suggested that the match was more closely fought than the score suggests. In fact, New Zealand was left to rue some terrible shooting after hitting the target with just 11 of their 33 shots at goal.
Yet the Kiwis were not without a decent excuse. First, they were used to playing with a larger goal ring, and second, in New Zealand the ring was placed against the goal post, whereas in Australia it was 6 inches out from the post. Despite all that, netball’s first international match paved the way for the standardisation of the sport’s rules around the globe, which included the adoption of the seven-a-side format.
In fact, the Kiwis subsequently invited Australia and England to play in a seven-a-side tournament in New Zealand in 1940, and the nations planned for a complete set of international rules to be agreed upon then. But the beginning of the Second World War forced the postponement of the tournament, and it wasn’t until 1948 that Australia and New Zealand met for a second time.
Australia toured New Zealand in August and September 1948, playing 23 matches, including three international games against the Silver Ferns. Australia won each of the internationals by an average margin of 21 goals. Although domestic netball in New Zealand was played on a nine-a-side basis until 1956, the series in 1948 featured only seven players per team.
Another long gap between matches then ensued, with 12 years elapsing before the Silver Ferns travelled across the Tasman in 1960 for a three-match series. It was during this series that the rivalry was well and truly ignited. The flame was lit when New Zealand caused a boilover by winning the first game, in Adelaide, by nine goals. The shock of being beaten by the Silver Ferns for the first time sparked the Diamonds into action. They won the last two matches, played in Melbourne and Sydney, yet both were very close. Five goals separated the teams in the second game, while the third was decided by just one, with Australia winning 46–45.
After the official rules for netball were finally agreed upon in 1961, the first World Netball Championships were held in England in 1963. The 11-team tournament was conducted on a round-robin basis, with all the teams playing each other. No final was played; the winner was the team that finished atop the ladder. Australia, coached by Lorna McConchie and captained by Joyce Brown (who later became a very successful national coach), cruised through its early matches, defeating Sri Lanka 82–12 and Wales 94–7. But its run towards the title was almost upended by New Zealand. In a thrilling game, the lead changed on numerous occasions before Australia prevailed by a goal, 37–36. The Diamonds then won the remainder of their ten matches, ending the tournament with an unbeaten record and claiming the first world title. Almost every international netball championship held since then, whether for a world title or a Commonwealth Games gold medal, has been a two-horse race between Australia and New Zealand.
It was four years later, at the end of the second World Netball Championships, played in Perth, that the next chapter of the Diamonds vs Silver Ferns rivalry was written. As was the case at the first world titles, the tournament was a round-robin affair, although this time it featured only eight teams. The organisers decided to create some drama by fixturing the Australia–New Zealand game in the final round of matches. As expected, both teams won their first six games, which meant their clash became a play-off for the title of world champion. Australia went into the match as favourite, but New Zealand silenced the pro-Aussie crowd by scoring a six-goal win. Silver Fern Joan Harnett was named player of the tournament.
The rivalry was next put to the test when Australia played a two-match international series in New Zealand in 1969. The Diamonds won the first game, in Wellington, by ten goals, then lost the second, in Dunedin, by four. Such twists and turns have been a defining feature of the seven-decade netball rivalry between the nations.
Beginning in December 1970, the third World Netball Championships were held in Kingston, Jamaica, which meant an arduous multi-stop flight for the players from Australia and New Zealand. Nevertheless, the two teams swept all before them during their early rounds. Once again it was a round-robin tournament, and once again the two netball superpowers were drawn to play each other in the final round. As in 1967, both teams went into the match undefeated, so the winner would be crowned world champion. The only difference this time around was the result. Australia, led by its captain and star defender, Gaye Teede, won by six goals.
Australia did not play another international match until the fourth World Netball Championships, held in New Zealand in August and September 1975. Most of the Diamonds’ matches were one-sided; they scored a 74-goal win over Papua New Guinea and a 55-goal victory over Singapore, although they beat England by only five. The majority of New Zealand’s games were also one-sided, but the Silver Ferns cost themselves any chance of winning the title when they suffered an upset loss to England. Still, the tournament finished with a bang, as the now traditional last-round match between the Kiwis and Australia went down to the wire. The scores were tied at 34–34 when the final whistle blew, but the result was enough to hand the Aussies their third world championship from four attempts. Australia’s star player was its captain and goal shooter, Margaret Caldow, whose international career spanned 17 years. At the end of the tournament Caldow was named captain of the ‘World Team’.
The next Australia–New Zealand match took place at the fifth World Netball Championships, which featured 12 teams and were played in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, in 1979. This time, the match between the top-ranked nations occurred in the eighth round of the tournament rather than in the final round. Again under the captaincy of Caldow, the Diamonds defeated their arch-rivals by two goals. The Australian players rejoiced, believing their victory over the Silver Ferns would ensure that they won the tournament. But the following day they were beaten by two goals by the home side, Trinidad and Tobago, in a major upset. When New Zealand then beat Trinidad and Tobago a couple of days later, the organisers were forced to declare that the tournament had finished as a three-way tie.
The rivalry between the Diamonds and Silver Ferns continued during the 1980s. New Zealand won five matches in a row against Australia in 1981 and 1982, only to have the Diamonds strike back and defeat their nemesis in what proved to be the deciding match of the 1983 World Netball Championships, held in Singapore.
Australia fielded a very strong team through the mid-1980s, with tireless centre Jill McIntosh and shooter Anne Sargeant (who captained the Diamonds for six years) leading the way. But after 1983 it was the Silver Ferns who earned a reputation for delivering when it mattered most. They beat the Diamonds by four goals in the final of the Australia Games at Melbourne’s Festival Hall in 1985, and later that year they were again too good – although this time the margin was only two goals – when the teams met in the final of the World Games in London (a quadrennial festival featuring international sports that are not part of the Olympics). Although netball is no longer part of the World Games line-up, the sport was included in the program in 1985, 1989 (held in Karlsruhe, Germany) and 1993 (The Hague, Netherlands). Australia and New Zealand met in the gold medal match on each occasion, the Silver Ferns winning the first two and the Diamonds claiming the third.
New Zealand continued its big-game dominance of Australia when the seventh World Netball Championships were held in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1987 (the last world championships to be held outdoors). Captained by Leigh Gibbs and coached by Lois Muir, the Silver Ferns team that contested the tournament is remembered as one of the most talented combinations in netball history. The New Zealanders were far too good for the Diamonds when they met in the eighth round, winning 39–28. It was not a good tournament for the Australians, who the previous day had suffered a one-goal loss to Trinidad and Tobago. The Silver Ferns duly won the world title, finishing the tournament unbeaten. The Diamonds and Trinidad and Tobago were awarded equal second place.
The Silver Ferns won all three matches when the Diamonds toured New Zealand in 1989, but the first indication that the tables were turning again came when the teams met in a demonstration match at the 1990 Commonwealth Games, held in Auckland. Australia emerged victorious by a whopping 18 goals, and then took that form into the eighth World Netball Championships, held at the Sydney Entertainment Centre in 1991.
For the first time, the competing teams were divided into two groups and the tournament featured semi-finals and a final, which was quite a contrast to the simple round-robin format that had been used since 1963. As the top-ranked teams, Australia and New Zealand were placed in different groups. Without the Silver Ferns to worry them, the Diamonds barnstormed through their preliminary matches, their results including a 27-goal win over England and a 107–10 defeat of Sri Lanka. Their semi-final against Jamaica was a harder-fought affair, but the Aussie team still managed to win by six goals. Predictably, New Zealand defeated England in the other semi-final, which set up a much-anticipated final between the best teams in the world.
This game would prove to be such a brilliant contest that it is often quoted as being among the top five international netball matches ever played. The Silver Ferns led 41–40 at three-quarter time, and the game was in the balance right to the end. Australia opened a 53–51 lead with just over a minute to go, before New Zealand narrowed the margin to one goal with 30 seconds remaining.
With a big audience watching the match on ABC TV and Aussie Prime Minister Bob Hawke cheering in the stands, the Diamonds had the centre pass. They tried to flip the ball around and run down the clock, but Silver Ferns defender Waimarama Taumaunu cut off a pass. With about 15 seconds to go, Taumaunu dished the ball off to a teammate, yet the next pass into the goal-ring was a wild one, and Australian defender Roselee Jencke was able to pick it off.
Urged on by a screaming crowd, the Diamonds rushed the ball up the court, the final whistle sounding as a pass found Vicky Wilson by herself inside Australia’s goal-ring. Wilson shot the goal but it did not count, and the final score was 53–52.
The excitement got the better of former Australian player Anne Sargeant, who was providing special comments for the ABC’s television coverage. ‘Australia! Yes!’ Sargeant yelled as Wilson and her teammates began jumping up and down with delight. Soon the Diamonds’ coach, Joyce Brown, was on the court, hugging her players. Up in the stands, Hawke, wearing a huge grin, clapped wildly. ‘Your heart goes out to New Zealand, who led for so much of the game,’ said ABC commentator Steve Robilliard, remembering that the match was also being screened across the ditch.
The Diamonds’ victory meant they were now the outright winners of seven of the nine world championships played. The triumph in Sydney was also Australia’s 19th consecutive win, a run of success that had begun more than a year before. The Diamonds would eventually win 37 straight matches, their streak including a clean sweep of New Zealand in the three-match Kleenex Cup that was played in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide a year after the world championships. All up, Australia’s winning run lasted from the time it beat England in Melbourne on 17 June 1990 to its three-goal win over New Zealand in the second game of the Milo Series, played in the Kiwi town of Palmerston North on 21 May 1994. Predictably, it was the Silver Ferns who finally reminded the Diamonds what defeat tasted like, their breakthrough win coming in the third and final game of the Milo Series, played in Auckland.
The Diamonds soon regained their verve. Coached by Jill McIntosh and captained by Michelle Fielke, Australia did not lose another game prior to the 1995 World Netball Championships, which were held in the English city of Birmingham. The tournament was notable for two important firsts: South Africa fielded a team, having been allowed to re-enter the global sporting world following the end of apartheid; and the South Africans upset the netball world order by defeating the Silver Ferns in the first round of the preliminary matches. That loss meant the Silver Ferns were placed in the same pool as Australia for the second round of matches, so they had to do battle a week before the final. Yet they put on a show that was worthy of a championship decider, with the Diamonds winning by a goal, 45–44.
‘Victory came in the last three minutes,’ read the match report in Melbourne’s Age newspaper. ‘The teams were locked at 15–15 at the first break; NZ led 19–16 at half-time. The advantage then changed several times, with NZ 43–42 ahead with three minutes to spare. In a frantic finish, Australia netted three goals to NZ’s one.’
Coach Jill McIntosh described the Diamonds’ win as ‘up there with the best of them’. But success had come at a huge cost, as 30-year-old champion shooter Vicky Wilson suffered a serious knee injury when she was bumped to the floor just before half-time. At the time, it was feared that the injury would end Wilson’s international career. ‘Tears are just continually rolling down her face,’ Wilson’s teammate Carley Baker told reporters after the match. ‘She has no idea where her future lies. She knows there is nothing we can do for her and nothing she can do for herself. It’s devastating.’ Wilson’s state of mind had improved by the time the Diamonds thrashed South Africa in the final, and she watched on from the sidelines with a smile on her face.
By the end of the 1995 world championships, the Diamonds were compiling another impressive winning streak, having scored 17 consecutive victories since their loss to New Zealand in May 1994. This run of success reached 26 straight wins, before Australia suffered an upset two-goal loss during a tour of Jamaica in February 1998. But the Diamonds then won their following 17 matches, which included numerous defeats of New Zealand.
In fact, the period from 1995 to 1999 featured some of the most one-sided Diamonds–Silver Ferns matches in the history of the great rivalry. Australia won all three contests in the 1996 Milo Cup (played in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide) by an average margin of 16 goals. Australia’s tour of New Zealand in 1998 produced three similarly one-sided games, the Diamonds winning the first by 11 goals, the second by nine and the third by four. One reason for Australia’s continued dominance was Wilson’s effort in defying the team doctor’s initial diagnosis and returning to the court for Australia a year after undergoing reconstructive surgery on her knee.
In 1998 netball was included as an official sport at the Commonwealth Games for the first time, and although South Africa and England both fielded strong teams, it was Australia and New Zealand that met in the gold medal match at the Stadium Juara in Kuala Lumpur. Stung into action by their recent poor form against the Diamonds, the Silver Ferns put up a brave fight. But Australia proved too polished when it mattered most, Wilson erasing her painful memories of 1995 by leading the Diamonds a 42–39 victory.
‘SIMPLY THE BEST!’ shouted the headline in the Herald Sun a day after the match. ‘If there was any question whether Australia was still netball’s powerhouse, it was answered once and for all, with Commonwealth Games gold,’ read the accompanying report. ‘Down by three goals with just 10 minutes to go, the world’s most dominant team fought back to write itself into the history books . . .’
Wilson, who had burst into tears at the final whistle, said it was ‘one of the toughest games’ she had played. ‘I tried not to think about losing,’ she added. ‘I just kept track of the clock and the centre passes. I knew we had to go goal for goal.’
Diamonds coach Jill McIntosh was similarly effusive: ‘I had complete faith in them. I have seen them do it all before. I have seen them 11 goals down and come back so I knew they could do it. This victory is up there with the best. It is the first gold for netball and we wanted to create history. This is as good as the world champs victory . . . all the tours and preparation are worth it just for this one moment.’
Five months after the Commonwealth Games, New Zealand finally broke its almost-five-year drought against Australia. The Silver Ferns’ 12-goal win in the first game of the Fisher & Paykel Cup, played in Christchurch, was their first victory over the Diamonds since May 1994.
But Australia was back to its best by the time the 10th World Netball Championships began in Christchurch, New Zealand, in September 1999 – not that the Kiwi press shared that view. ‘The Jill McIntosh-coached Australian side were seen by many as past their peak, and . . . they were even derided as “Jill’s Geriatrics”,’ read a review of the tournament on the TVNZ website. The Diamonds were never seriously threatened during the preliminary matches, and cruised past England in their semi-final. Spurred on by passionate home crowds, the Silver Ferns were similarly impressive, setting up a mouth-watering final against Australia by battling past Jamaica in their semi.
It proved to be yet another classic contest. New Zealand led by two goals at half-time, and the Silver Ferns appeared to have the world title in the bag when they led by six goals at three-quarter time. Under pressure to inspire a revival, McIntosh made a huge call during the break when she decided to bench Wilson, her captain and champion shooter, and replace her with the far less experienced Jenny Borlase.
The change paid off, as Australia staged one of its greatest comebacks, scoring 14 goals to seven in the final quarter. In a frantic finish, scores were level when the Diamonds’ 21-year-old goal attack, Sharelle McMahon, received the ball with just one second left on the game clock. She quickly flung the ball towards the target and it sailed through the ring as the clock ticked down to zero, her accurate shot handing Australia an unbelievable 42–41 victory.
McMahon told her former teammate Liz Ellis in the book Netball Heroes: ‘I don’t really remember what was going through my head when I shot that goal. When [New Zealand’s] Donna Loffhagen took her last shot, I remember thinking we were going to lose. But we got the rebound from Donna’s shot, and I snapped out of that and back into playing. When the ball was in my hands I didn’t know there was only one second left – I was just playing netball.’
McMahon’s heroics meant the Diamonds had won their eighth world championship, in the process breaking the Silver Ferns’ hearts yet again. McIntosh, meanwhile, was now a supercoach. ‘Vicky Wilson had only one shot at goal in that third quarter, which was highly unlike her, so the decision was quite easy,’ McIntosh explained in Netball Heroes. ‘Jenny was pumped and ready and came on and turned it around. And I was lucky. We got out of it and so everyone thinks you’re a hero for doing it.’
Three years later, in August 2002, the two teams put on another brilliant show when they met in the gold medal match at the Manchester Commonwealth Games. The Silver Ferns were now a far stronger team thanks to the inclusion of Irene van Dyk, the former captain of South Africa who had emigrated to New Zealand. Van Dyk made her first appearance for New Zealand in a major tournament at the games, and her prowess in attack proved invaluable – she finished as the leading scorer in the competition.
Her great form meant New Zealand went into the gold medal match with plenty of confidence, and the Silver Ferns controlled large parts of a seesawing game. They initially jumped out to a seven-goal lead, only to see Australia hit back and edge in front. New Zealand then opened up a three-goal advantage halfway through the final quarter and was still two goals in front with two minutes to play.
However, the Diamonds proved nerveless in the closing stages. After the margin had been narrowed to one goal, Aussie shooter Catherine Cox – who was actually born in New Zealand – netted a long-range goal with 20 seconds to go, levelling the scores at 46–46 and sending the match into extra-time.
Australia opened a two-goal buffer early in the first seven-minute period of extra-time, but New Zealand responded, with van Dyk nailing three successive goals to give the Silver Ferns the lead. In a major shock, van Dyk – the most accurate shooter in the world – then missed a relatively easy shot, and soon afterwards Cox showed nerves of steel to nail a goal from the outer region of the goal circle. The scores were tied at the end of the first period of extra-time.
Remarkably, they were still tied – this time at 55–55 – when the whistle blew to end the second period of extra-time, and so the match entered a period of sudden-death extra-time in which the first team to open a two-goal buffer would be the winner. As at the world championships in 1999, Australian goal attack Sharelle McMahon was the hero, slotting the goals that handed the Diamonds a two-goal buffer and the gold medal.
‘What a great feeling to win a gold medal like that,’ McMahon said shortly after the match had reached its dramatic conclusion. ‘That game felt like it went on forever. This game did come down to one goal, but really it is a team sport, and Catherine [Cox] was sinking some really important goals through the final seven minutes. If she wasn’t sinking those long bombs we really wouldn’t have a had a chance.’
In the wake of the 2002 Commonwealth Games, many of the New Zealanders no doubt wondered if they were ever going to defeat Australia in a major championship again. ‘All the losses that you go through make you stronger,’ the Silver Ferns’ captain at the time, Anna Rowberry, said in Netball Heroes. ‘It makes you tough. When you go through all that pain, you don’t want to go through it all again.’
As it turned out, New Zealand had to wait less than a year to gain some revenge. The Diamonds and Silver Ferns both qualified for the final of the 11th World Netball Championships, held in Kingston, Jamaica, in July 2003. The final match of the tournament was a typical Australia–New Zealand encounter: fast, skilful, fearfully competitive and very close. This time around, the Silver Ferns finally kept their composure when everything was on the line. Having led at every break, they refused to buckle in the face of a late comeback from the Diamonds, winning 49–47.
Australian defender Liz Ellis had been unable to curtail the influence of Irene van Dyk, whose brilliant shooting was the difference between the two sides. Her accuracy meant the Silver Ferns converted 90 per cent of their shots; by contrast, Australia’s shooters converted only 70 per cent of theirs.
‘This is the best moment of my netball career – it’s just overwhelming,’ Rowberry exclaimed during the celebrations. ‘I couldn’t have asked for anything more. We share this gold medal with so many people back home – so many players that have been so close in Manchester, Birmingham and Kuala Lumpur, and all our families back home. We share this moment with them.’
New Zealand’s win broke the Diamonds’ run of 38 consecutive victories at world championships, a streak dating back to their loss to the Silver Ferns in Glasgow in 1987. It was a disappointing end to the international careers of Australia’s captain, Kathryn Harby-Williams, and coach, Jill McIntosh, who both retired after the game. ‘It’s the end of an era, so it would have been nice to go out on a positive note, but it wasn’t to be,’ Harby-Williams told the media at the post-match press conference.
The pair had been at the heart of a moment of controversy during the third quarter, when McIntosh decided to take Harby-Williams, who was playing goal defence, out of the game. At the time, McIntosh felt her skipper was not doing enough to slow down the delivery to van Dyk, but she later admitted in Netball Heroes that benching Harby-Williams was a mistake:
I’ve thought about it a lot and in hindsight I would still have brought Janine [Ilitch] on but I wouldn’t have taken Kathryn off – I would have played her somewhere else. You do what you think at the time is best for the team. You do what you think is going to win that match. You can’t let your heart rule your head in situations like that. But while none of that came into it at the time, it certainly did afterwards. And I thought, ‘Goodness, what have I done?’ But I knew I did it for every right reason at the time.
The Silver Ferns’ breakthrough win over Australia in Jamaica began a period in which they had an edge over the Diamonds. In 2004 and 2005 New Zealand won six of its eight matches against Australia, and the domination continued in the 2006 Commonwealth Games, held in Melbourne. Cheered on by parochial home crowds, the Diamonds – now coached by Norma Plummer and led on the court by stand-in captain Sharelle McMahon, since the permanent team captain, Liz Ellis, was sidelined by a knee reconstruction – suffered an early shock when they were held to a draw by Jamaica during the preliminary rounds. But they recovered to easily defeat England in their semi-final and progress to the gold medal match. New Zealand had progressed to the deciding game without a hiccup, and it was clear that the Silver Ferns were at the top of their game when they thrashed Jamaica by 20 goals in their semi-final.
That performance proved to be a sign of things to come, as New Zealand quickly silenced the home crowd by taking an early lead, then held the Diamonds at bay for the remainder of the game, securing the gold medal with a five-goal win. In the aftermath of New Zealand’s win, The Age’s Linda Pearce summed up what the result meant for the balance of power in international netball:
The era of Australia’s netball dominance officially closed at the 2003 world championships and, yesterday, its last major title fell into New Zealand’s eager hands. Yet yesterday’s gold-medal match also confirmed that while Australia may be in the unfamiliar role of pursuer, it is just a couple of breaths behind.
New Zealand won yet another absorbing trans-Tasman final 60-55 at Vodafone Arena to relegate the two-time defending champion to Commonwealth Games silver for the first time. It was, captain Sharelle McMahon said, a ‘devastating’ result for Australia, which has lost wing attack Natalie Avellino to international retirement and may yet find that defenders Janine IIitch and Alison Broadbent go the same way.
The gold medal playoffs in the previous two games could hardly have been more dramatic, with a one-goal win to Australia in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 and the double-overtime drama of Manchester four years ago contributing so much to the build-up this time. Although not as tight, the match was closer than anticipated, and did not disappoint.
It included one stretch of 16 unbroken centre passes, and the quarter-time deficit was also the final margin. Australia had one more attempt at goal overall but, for all its tenacity and desperation to keep it’s unbeaten Games record intact, could not trim the difference to below three goals after falling behind by seven early in the game.
‘We certainly had our chances, and you can claw a few things back but you can’t then give away some easy passes I felt we should have nailed,’ coach Norma Plummer said. ‘But in the end that could be the pressure of the game, and so congratulations to New Zealand, a well-deserved win.’
History suggested that Australia was never going to be on the back foot for long, so it was no surprise that the Diamonds were reinvigorated by the time the 12th World Netball Championships were held in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2007. Australia crushed its meagre opposition in the preliminary matches, defeating Scotland 93–20 and the Cook Islands 90–22 en route to a semi-final clash with England. The Diamonds won that game by 18 goals, setting up yet another championship decider against the Silver Ferns.
With five minutes to go in the final, just one goal separated the teams, and with a big crowd cheering on the New Zealanders, it seemed the home side was set to overrun its arch-enemy. But, as in the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, it was the home side that faltered. With the results of 2003 and 2006 burning in the back of their minds, the Diamonds surged away in the closing stages and won by four goals.
It was a particularly emotional result for veteran Australian defender and team captain Liz Ellis, who had rebounded from her serious knee injury to win back her place in the team. The victory was the full-stop to her career that Ellis had been craving, and in the days following the match she announced her retirement from international netball. ABC radio’s PM program summed up her decision thus: ‘If Liz Ellis were a male, and played cricket, she’d be up there in the national consciousness with Steve Waugh or Ricky Ponting. As it is, she’s a netballer, and she’s neither wealthy nor super-famous. Liz Ellis retired today after leading the national team to a World Championship victory in Auckland on Saturday. She represented Australia in a record 122 test matches over 15 years, she won three world championships, two Commonwealth Games gold medals and four national trophies along the way.’
Ellis was in the commentary box working for Channel Ten when the Diamonds and the Silver Ferns met in their next championship decider. The game in question was the gold medal match at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, in Delhi, India. During the previous months, the Australia–New Zealand netball rivalry had received formal recognition when the governors-general of the two nations came together and created the Constellation Cup, a striking Southern Cross-inspired trophy that was to be awarded to the winner of an annual series.
When the first Constellation Cup match was played in Adelaide, the Kiwi governor-general, Sir Anand Satyanand, stated: ‘Almost 80 years ago, Lord Bledisloe, one of my predecessors as Governor-General, gifted the cup that bears his name and which has come to symbolise rivalry on the rugby field between Australia and New Zealand. The Constellation Cup will provide an equally enduring focus for netballers on both sides of the Tasman and recognise the wide participation in the sport.’ Led by captain Sharelle McMahon, the Diamonds won the game, while the next two matches, played in New Zealand, were split. As a result, the Australians were able to place the newly minted cup in their trophy cabinet before heading off to the Delhi Commonwealth Games.
As great as so many of the previous clashes between Australia and New Zealand had been, the gold medal match in Delhi trumped them all for drama. The Diamonds began well, twice opening four-goal leads in the second quarter. But the Silver Ferns suddenly took control of the match, and by midway through the final quarter they led 40–33.
With her team seemingly down and out, Australian coach Norma Plummer brought champion shooter Catherine Cox, whose form had not been good enough to command a place in the starting seven, into the game. Cox helped ignite a remarkable comeback, and Australia scored 14 of the next 21 goals. With the scores tied at 47–47, Cox had a chance to win the game for the Diamonds in the dying seconds, but she missed and the game went into extra-time.
The teams traded goals during the first seven-minute period of extra-time, and the scores were still tied at the end of it. Only seconds remained in the second period of extra-time when New Zealand shooter Maria Tutaia, who proved a superb foil for the legendary Irene van Dyk, produced her first heroic act, calmly levelling the scores. After 14 minutes of extra-time, the score was now 58–58.
It was time for sudden death – the first team to open a two-goal lead would win the gold medal. Australia scored first, then Cox had her second chance to seal victory for the Diamonds. But she missed once more. The Silver Ferns soon levelled the scores yet again, and the game rolled on. Fully eight minutes of sudden-death extra-time were played before Tutaia wrote herself into Kiwi sporting folklore by nailing successive goals.
When the second of them went through the ring, the Silver Ferns collapsed in a jubilant heap on the court. The Diamonds could not hide their devastation, and their tears flowed freely as disappointment coursed through their aching bodies. Having lasted 82 minutes, this was the longest international netball match ever played (a regular netball match consists of four 15-minute quarters). Watched by hundreds of thousands of people in both nations, it was also a brilliant advertisement for both the sport, and for the incredible rivalry between the Diamonds and the Silver Ferns.
Journalist Peter Hanlon captured the essence of the occasion in his report for The Age:
Fittingly for the two nations that are invariably left standing when the music stops and the duel for netball’s major prize begins, Australia and New Zealand contested the last gold medal of Delhi’s Games last night. So shattered were the Diamonds in defeat, their part in perhaps the greatest contest of these Games was lost to them, too.
Ascendant in the first half, seemingly beaten by a Silver Ferns surge in the second, Australia clawed back a seven-goal last-quarter deficit to send the decider into extra time, then double overtime.
Baskets were traded for another eight nerve-jangling minutes before the magnificent Maria Tutaia drained the winner, settling the issue 66–64 and leaving the Silver Ferns’ saviour hoping her parents back home had survived watching it.
Sharelle McMahon, Australia’s veteran captain, felt like double extra time had gone ‘for a million years’. Thirteen years an international, she rated it the toughest final of her career. ‘I’m really struggling to put a positive spin on this at the moment.’
None were hurting more than her great mate and shooting partner Catherine Cox, who fought back tears and tried vainly to cling to teammates’ consoling words that the two long-range victory chances she missed weren’t the only reason all were feeling so miserable.
‘It’s gut-wrenching to know I had an opportunity to win the game,’ Cox said of misses in the dying seconds of normal time, and again early in double overtime when a two-goal lead would have brought a golden end and redemption for the loss to New Zealand in the Melbourne 2006 final.
‘Four years now we have to wait for another shot at it, [and] we were waiting four years from the last one.’
These great sporting rivals meet regularly, but only in Commonwealth Games and world championships does defeat truly burn. Asked if she had felt worse after a loss, coach Norma Plummer said: ‘We don’t have too many, [but] I’m not feeling too good at the moment.’ She sympathised with Cox, pointing to a centre-pass break and a stepping penalty as just two of many less-glaring but equally-costly errors. McMahon concurred. ‘I can go through all the mistakes I made and let you know which one might have caused the loss.’
After all that excitement and drama, no one was surprised when the next major championship game between the Diamonds and Silver Ferns, the final of the 2011 World Netball Championships, in Singapore, was another classic. Australia went into the match desperate to avenge the result in Delhi. Six members of the team that lost at the Commonwealth Games remained in the Diamonds’ squad (a ruptured Achilles tendon meant McMahon wasn’t one of them), while Plummer was still the coach.
New Zealand dominated the early going, van Dyk’s 17 goals from 17 attempts helping her team snare a six-goal half-time lead. But Plummer made a game-changing move when she took Cox out of the game and replaced her with 23-year-old Caitlin Bassett, who had played only five international matches before the tournament. Bassett spearheaded Australia’s revival, her two goals in the final minute of regular time drawing the Diamonds level. She even had the chance to win the match in the frantic final seconds, but missed, which meant yet another big game between Australia and New Zealand would be settled in extra-time.
Maria Tutaia had the chance to slot the winning goal with just a minute remaining in extra-time, but she was unable to match her heroics in Delhi, the ball bouncing off the ring and landing in the hands of a Diamonds defender. Australia spirited the ball forward and Bassett capped off a remarkable effort by slotting the winning goal.
‘I didn’t even know it was the last goal, it was only when I heard the cheer,’ Bassett said as the celebrations began. ‘I wanted Australia to win but I never dreamed I would be the one out there.’
Australia’s tenth world title, which elevated the team back above New Zealand to number one in the international rankings, was certainly a case of sweet revenge. ‘The one I was happiest for was probably Natty,’ Plummer said, referring to her run-all-game centre, Natalie von Bertouch, who assumed the captaincy after McMahon was injured. ‘I know after the Comm Games . . . we caught up a couple of months later and she told me she was still that gutted, she really took it to heart. I was just so pleased that she got the win as captain.’
Von Bertouch herself added: ‘There couldn’t be anything better. We just kept fighting back and they kept pulling away and we kept fighting again. It just came down to who was in front when the whistle blew.’
Australia capped off a great 2011 by retaining the Constellation Cup. But no team dominates the rivalry between the Diamonds and Silver Ferns for long. When the 2012 Constellation Cup rolled around, the Silver Ferns won the opening game, in Melbourne, by two goals, then surged to a 16-goal lead early in the second match, in Auckland, before the Diamonds’ Bassett inspired another extraordinary comeback.
Having started the game on the bench, Bassett was brought on at the start of the third quarter, again replacing Catherine Cox, who was struggling in her 100th international match. After shooting 19 goals in the second half, Bassett had the chance to send the contest into extra-time, but her shot missed and the Silver Ferns won by the narrowest of margins, 50–49.
In an illustration of how much the rivalry has captured the public’s imagination in New Zealand, a sell-out crowd of almost 9000 people had crammed into Vector Arena to watch the game – the largest crowd to ever attend a netball match in New Zealand – and the locals headed home happy as the Silver Ferns took possession of the Constellation Cup for the first time. It was also New Zealand’s first series win over the Diamonds in eight years – a remarkable feat, when you consider how even the rivalry has been throughout its long history.
True to form, Australia hit back to win the third match, played at Canterbury Arena in Christchurch, by six goals. ‘It’s got this special magic dust spread over the whole game when we play the Ferns,’ the Diamonds new coach, Lisa Alexander, had told The Age prior to the start of the series. ‘It’s just incredibly exciting.’
Indeed, the rivalry between the Diamonds and the Silver Ferns consistently delivers skill and drama of the highest order. Not only is it the greatest rivalry in netball, but it might also just be the greatest rivalry in all of Australian sport.
AUSTRALIA vs NEW ZEALAND, NETBALL (1938–2012)
Matches played: 103
Australia wins: 64
New Zealand wins: 45
World Netball Championships victories
Australia: 10: 1963, 1971, 1975, 1979 (joint winners), 1983, 1991, 1995, 1999, 2007, 2011
New Zealand: 4: 1967, 1979 (joint winners), 1987, 2003
Commonwealth Games gold medals
Australia: 2: 1998, 2002
New Zealand: 2: 2006, 2010