![\"Kate](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/4JKL1YO_260801SilverFernsEngland_099_1_JPG.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nThe Silver Ferns have advanced to their first Commonwealth Games gold medal match since 2014, after beating England 61-54 in Glasgow.<\/p>\n
The Silver Ferns will meet either Jamaica or Commonwealth Games champions Australia in the final.<\/p>\n
The Ferns have not won Commonwealth Games gold since their epic double extra-time win against Australia at the 2010 Delhi Games.<\/p>\n
The second semi-final takes place at midnight tonight, with the Australian Diamonds the clear favourites.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Saturday, the Silver Ferns confirmed the news that fans were dreading, that defender Catherine Hall had been ruled out of the Games after rupturing her ACL in the match against Wales on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The Silver Ferns are reduced to 11 players, with Kelly Jackson, Karin Burger, and Carys Stythe having to take the load in the defensive end.<\/p>\n
Georgia Heffernan, who sustained a minor ankle injury in the same game and missed the final pool match against Trinidad and Tobago, was able to make the starting line-up at goal attack.<\/p>\n
The Silver Ferns started the game strong. Kate Heffernan at centre got busy early on, picking up an intercept, and threatening more.<\/p>\n
Shooter Grace Nweke was a bright target for the Silver Ferns feeders.<\/p>\n
Conversely, with a few minutes left in the first spell Eleanor Cardwell replaced England goal shoot Olivia Tchine, who was struggling to present strongly to the ball.<\/p>\n
The Silver Ferns led 16-11 at the first quarter, which prompted the Roses to make four changes for the second quarter.<\/p>\n
England applied far more defensive pressure, and the Silver Ferns were forced to make several passes and sometimes go backwards before finding an opening into Nweke.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Kate Heffernan was strong again for the Silver Ferns.<\/p>\n
Jayne Russell \/ Photosport<\/p>\n
Heffernan continued to hover and pick-off the ball in the mid-court.<\/p>\n
Circle defenders Kelly Jackson and Karin Burger ground down the English shooters, while Mila Reuelu-Buchanan, who has been a revelation at wing defence, won ball through sheer hustle.<\/p>\n
The Silver Ferns maintained their five goal lead at half-time 29-24 before putting their foot down in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
The timing in the New Zealand attacking end was on-song and England couldn’t stop the ball supply into Nweke, who finished the game with 52 goals.<\/p>\n
The Roses threw everything they could at Nweke by putting three different goal keepers against her, but the Silver Fern was rock solid.<\/p>\n
Just as impressive was the feeding from wing attack Maddy Gordon, while goal attack Georgia Heffernan was the perfect foil.<\/p>\n
The Silver Ferns pushed out to a nine goal lead (46-37) after three quarters.<\/p>\n
The only change Silver Ferns coach Dame Noeline Taurua made was bringing Amelia Walmsley on at goal attack for the last few minutes.<\/p>\n
The challenge for the Silver Ferns will be to back their performance up in just over 24 hours, given they barely used the bench.<\/p>\n
The gold medal match starts at midnight Sunday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Silver Ferns have advanced to their first Commonwealth Games gold medal match since 2014, after beating England…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-554843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}