Netball World Cup: England beat Jamaica to claim bronze medal

“I don’t think any of you sitting here understands just what this girl puts herself through to be out on court and what she brings to the team, and she inspires every single person that wears the green and gold and she just deserves all the success”, Geitz said.

The 22-year-old Hadley again proved what a force she will be in the future with immaculate movement and some pin-point circle feeds to goal attack Erin Bell and shooter Caitlin Thwaites.

Having been in the New Zealand side since 2003, Brown said it had crossed her mind that the time to step aside and allow some youth to come through might be drawing near.

This win gave Silver Fern a ticket to challenging the holders Australia in the finals while England will have to compete against Jamaica for the bronze.

The Silver Ferns emptied the tank but couldn’t match a full-throttled Australian effort as the defending champions powered away to a 58-55 netball World Cup title win on Sunday.

“From a faster, more urgent start, to a relentless push through the last quarter, improvements were obvious all over the court from the chastened top seeds”, says the SMH.

Since finals were introduced to the World Cup format in 1991, New Zealand and Australia have been in six of the seven title deciders.

“We started strongly competing with Australia goal for goal for the first 10 minutes of the first quarter”, said Trish Wilcox, Welsh Netball’s head of elite performance.

And while they’re right – the depth of talent in both netball-mad nations is as deep as the Tasman dividing the countries – they may have to look a little further afield when assessing their main threats come the 2019 Netball World Cup in England.

“I made my first NSW team when I was 17 and I really enjoyed representing my state”. They have to beat England to qualify for the semifinals.

Captain Laura Geitz, arm in arm with Corletto and coach Lisa Alexander, described her team-mate as an inspiration.

Talking to The Times, Mentor said: “England players no longer fear Australian or New Zealand players and we all have confidence and self-belief which didn’t exist before”.

Kopua said the team needed to celebrate their win and acknowledge what they have achieved, but also be realistic that they are still only at pool play stage.