{"id":20382,"date":"2025-07-25T05:39:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T05:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/20382\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T05:39:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T05:39:08","slug":"nsw-swifts-attacker-helen-housby-says-super-netball-finals-nightmare-means-they-have-nothing-to-lose-against-melbourne-vixens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/20382\/","title":{"rendered":"NSW Swifts attacker Helen Housby says Super Netball finals ‘nightmare’ means they have nothing to lose against Melbourne Vixens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having survived a finals nightmare, star attacker Helen Housby says the NSW Swifts’ Super Netball fate can not get any worse than what has already happened.<\/p>\n

The Swifts will be out for redemption \u2014 and a spot in the 2025 decider \u2014 when they host the Melbourne Vixens in a do-or-die preliminary at the Sydney SuperDome on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Housby and her teammates were left reeling after a disastrous 77-45 semifinal mauling to grand final-bound West Coast in the Perth Arena “dungeon”.<\/p>\n

Fever into Super Netball grand final with 32-point demolition of Swifts<\/a><\/p>\n

The West Coast Fever are the first team into the Super Netball grand final after crushing the NSW Swifts in the major semifinal.<\/p>\n

After a perfect 8-0 start to the season, the Swifts have lost five of their past seven games.<\/p>\n

“It kind of feels like we’ve lived our nightmare but, in saying that, the sun came up the next day,” Housby said.<\/p>\n

“I don’t want to say it was a relief, but to get that game out of the way but still have a game to play, it almost feels like it can’t go any worse than what it was [against West Coast].<\/p>\n

“We’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain going into this game.”<\/p>\n

Housby has seen this movie before too, saying NSW have never had it easy on the way to a grand final.<\/p>\n

The Swifts were thumped 58\u201348 by Sunshine Coast in the 2019 major semifinal before rebounding to win the title.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

Housby also points to their 2023 run, where the Swifts eliminated the Fever by one point in the dying seconds.<\/p>\n

They later lost the grand final by one point to Adelaide.<\/p>\n

“It does feel like a bit of deja vu,” Housby said.<\/p>\n

“It always seems like there’s a bit of adversity in our wins and in our premierships, so I quite like that.<\/p>\n

“I love to be on the edge of performance. This group is itching for it. Just itching for another chance to prove ourselves and to show the netball world that that’s not what we stand for.”<\/p>\n

Swifts co-captain and mid-courter Paige Hadley is expected to return from a leg injury, in a massive boost for coach Briony Akle’s team.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Vixens are riding high after sensationally ending Adelaide’s bid for a third-straight title with a 58-56 win last week.<\/p>\n

The road to grand final glory works favourably for the Vixens, who will enjoy home-court advantage \u2014 despite finishing fourth \u2014 if they reach the decider.<\/p>\n

Despite the Fever finishing on top of the table, Rod Laver Arena will host the grand final on August 2 under Super Netball’s controversial policy of selling hosting rights for the decider.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having survived a finals nightmare, star attacker Helen Housby says the NSW Swifts’ Super Netball fate can not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5844,64,63,9740,9742,19095,588,85,3763],"class_list":{"0":"post-20382","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-abc-sport","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-melbourne-vixens","12":"tag-nsw-swifts","13":"tag-preliminary-final","14":"tag-sport","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-super-netball"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}