The Diamonds’ trophy cabinet is again complete after they snapped their New Zealand drought against the Silver Ferns in a thrilling extra time period to bring the Constellation Cup back to Australia.<\/p>\n
The Diamonds’ last win in New Zealand came in 2021 in Christchurch and the Australians were again celebrating in the south island city, regaining the trans-Tasman trophy on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
With the Diamonds expertly managing the last minute, Sophie Garbin scored the winning goal with four seconds left on the clock, clinching a 12-11 victory.<\/p>\n
With the Silver Ferns winning game four 62-57 to level at 2-2, the Cup went on the line in Series Decider Time, which was two seven-minute halves.<\/p>\n
New Zealand raced out to a 3-0 lead before the Diamonds, who had a shocker in the final quarter of regulation to give up a three-goal lead, settled into the mini-match.<\/p>\n
The world champions were up 7-5 at half-time but couldn’t rest after also leading through three quarters of regulation before the home side roared home to win the final term 19-11.<\/p>\n
In the second half of extra time, New Zealand drew level at 11-11 with sharp-shooter Grace Nweke’s goal with one minute 20 left on the clock but Australia smartly starved their opposition of another chance.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Ferns’ Grace Nweke shot a goal with a minute and 20 seconds left on the clock (AAP: John Davidson)<\/p>\n
They worked the ball around the court to run the clock down before feeding the ball into Garbin in the final seconds for her to slot the match-winner, allowing them to retrieve the trophy from their arch rivals.<\/p>\n
With Sunday Aryang falling heavily before full-time was called, the Diamonds looked shell-shocked with goal attack Kiera Austin in tears.<\/p>\n
But with the trophy in their grasp their victory started to sink in.<\/p>\n
“To get the win is awesome. I guess the way it finished, not so awesome,” Diamonds skipper Liz Watson said.<\/p>\n
“It’s just a weird format to play that extra 14 minutes, to be honest, but look, everyone had a great series, and we’re really proud to be able to finish with the Cup.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Liz Watson says the Diamonds are “really proud” to come home with the Constellation Cup. (AAP: John Davidson)<\/p>\n
It looked like Australia were going to win the series 3-1 having led after every quarter in a strong response to their disappointing game-three showing in Hamilton.<\/p>\n
With a two-pronged shooting attack with Garbin and Austin both options and the Silver Ferns reliant only on Nweke, the Diamonds skipped out to a 17-12 lead.<\/p>\n
Nweke missed two shots early although underlined her superstar status by only missing one other shot for the match, finishing with 56 goals from 59 attempts.<\/p>\n
Only one goal split the teams in the second term with the Diamonds maintaining a handy buffer 33-27.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A Sophie Garbin goal deep in extra time has clinched Australia the trans-Tasman trophy in New Zealand. (AAP: John Davidson)<\/p>\n
But buoyed by a vocal home crowd, the Kiwis lifted and levelled at 37-37 midway through the third quarter.<\/p>\n
The Aussies pulled away again to lead 46-43 heading into the final quarter but momentum swung with the Silver Ferns, with veteran goal-keeper Kelly Jackson proving a major disrupter in the Diamonds’ goal circle.<\/p>\n
They hit the lead after pouncing on a turnover with just over nine minutes left on the clock and never looked back.<\/p>\n
Despite that commanding victory, the night belonged to the Diamonds who took the extra period to win their 12th Constellation Cup series since 2010.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Diamonds’ trophy cabinet is again complete after they snapped their New Zealand drought against the Silver Ferns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,122931,24718,147766,9736,69113,5400,99059,85,147767],"class_list":["post-249010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-constellation-cup","tag-diamonds","tag-extra-time","tag-netball","tag-result","tag-score","tag-silver-ferns","tag-sports","tag-trans-tasman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249010","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=249010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}