A ruthless Diamonds outfit have fired off a warning to England at the Commonwealth Games, thrashing Tonga 99-38 to open their gold medal campaign in Glasgow.<\/p>\n
New Zealand kicked off Saturday (AEST) with a dominant 77-44 victory over hosts Scotland, but Australia\u2019s all-conquering netball team upped the ante at the Hydro against Games debutant the Tala.<\/p>\n
Defending their 2022 Birmingham gold medal, the netball world No.1 will get a medal match preview when they next face 2018 champions England in the second of five pool games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a big game tomorrow (against England) and we\u2019ve got to make sure that we\u2019re really firing,\u201d Diamonds coach Stacey Marinkovich said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t know what the scores actually mean until we actually face each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeams can be out of form and then as soon as we hit each other, everyone finds it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have an understanding of what England does. We know they\u2019ve got a star-studded line-up, and we\u2019re just going to take accountability for what we can do out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sophie Garbin (31 goals\/34 attempts) and Cara Koenen (31\/31) were near flawless in the circle against Tonga, while captain Liz Watson rarely missed a beat with 38 goal assists and 47 feeds.<\/p>\n
Former Melbourne Mavericks goalscorer Uneeq Palavi was easily Tonga\u2019s biggest threat, but defensive midcourter Jamie-Lee Price did well to contain her ex-teammate.<\/p>\n
The highly-rated Tongan attacker fired off 29 goals from 34 attempts as she managed being double-marked in the circle at times.<\/p>\n
Palavi wasn\u2019t the only ex-Super Netball player on court, with former Queensland Firebirds midcourter Hulita Veve going head-to-head with Watson and Kate Moloney.<\/p>\n
Price was one of five Games debutants in Australia\u2019s 12-strong squad, with Georgie Horjus, Matilda Garrett, Sophie Dwyer and Garbin all taking to the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to go out there with a lot of energy,\u201d Marinkovich said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last couple of days, it\u2019s been so much emotion and build-up, like, you don\u2019t lose sight of what actually stepping into the Commonwealth Games means.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve got a lot of flair out there. They had a lot of debutants and you never know exactly what you\u2019re going to get.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought the girls really took responsibility when they stepped out on court and really attacked the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Australia are aiming to go back-to-back for the second time in Games history since successfully defending their 1998 title in 2002.<\/p>\n
The Diamonds have never missed a netball final since the sport was added to the Games program in 1998 and are the most successful nation with four gold medals.<\/p>\n
It was just the second time the netball world No.1 played Tonga, having claimed an 85-38 pool victory at the 2023 World Cup in Cape Town.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s match may have been Tonga\u2019s first-ever Games match, but the Tala enjoyed healthy support from the nation\u2019s travelling contingent \u2013 which included Princess Latufuipeka Tuku\u2019aho \u2013 and the Scottish home crowd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A ruthless Diamonds outfit have fired off a warning to England at the Commonwealth Games, thrashing Tonga 99-38…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":823487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-823486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823486","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=823486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}