Test one, New Zealand 52 to Australia 40

I think I should start by saying congratulations to the New Zealand team on their win last night. I thought that that was the best game of netball from the New Zealanders that I have seen in a long time. I have thought over the last 5-6 times we have played them they have basically just bullied us out of the game. Due to some good tough umpiring this part of their game was kept to a minimum and that allowed the New Zealand players to play and excellent game of netball.
Although van Dyk top scored as usual she was well teamed up with the young Goal Attack, Maria Tutaia. This made for a tough time for both Liz Ellis and Bianca Chatfield. Maria moves well and created lots of opportunities for both of the shooters.
Australia had our chance to stay in touch with some great turn overs in the defence end of the court but couldn’t capitalise on these until the 3rd Quarter. I thought that when we crossed over into the attacking third Australia panicked and then gave the ball straight back to the Silver Ferns with either a bad choice of pass or an ill executed one.
Australia lost the game in the 2nd quarter but to their credit they took control of the game in the 2nd half of the game. Australia worked really hard in the third quarter to peg back the lead to 7 goals but unfortunately was unable to keep up the momentum in the 4th quarter. There are many positives that Australia can take from last nights game and one of them would be the performance of Susan Pratley. After a nervous start, she came into the game and made her presence felt.
Game two of the Holden Test series will be played at the Acer Arena in Sydney from 8.15pm on Tuesday night and I'm sure that we will be working on our over all performance and if they can play a solid 60 minutes we will see a better result.
You can purchase tickets to the test from Ticketek.