Tutaia shapes as Diamonds’ WC final target
The Sunshine Girls, fourth-ranked team in the world, were level on points with Malawi, ranked sixth before the match.
“It always seems to be against New Zealand“, she said.
England struggled to find an accurate feed to their shooters in the first half of the game and Australia’s Renae Hallinan at Wing Defence and Julie Corletto at Goal Defence were dominant against the England attack.
“Win or lose, we’re going to put everything out on the court”.
Saturday’s semi-final at a bursting, boisterous Allphones Arena will be the next.
Again. Australia and New Zealand have played on 122 occasions, 14 of them in World Cups, five times previously in finals, for a 4-1 advantage to the Diamonds.
The adjustment mirrored that made by New Zealand against Jamaica on Tuesday, when shooter Bailey Mes was pinged with a swag of offensive penalties for leaning backwards in rebounding positions.
The Malawi Queens brought the same drive and determination that saw them almost topple New Zealand two days ago, the Queens surging from behind to within a goal’s margin of Jamaica during the third quarter on Friday and maintaining the pressure throughout the final term.
“We’ve got to cope with the zone better, I think we will. We’ve got plans in place for that and we’ve been working on it all week”, she said.
Australia’s vice-captain Kimberley Green and Natalie Medhurst provided movement and space for top goalscorer Caitlin Basset as the world number one side took the first quarter 17-15.
She said her message to the players before the match was that they had nothing to lose, so they could relax and take it up to them.
Defender Bec Bulley was wary of the Caribbean stars’ new sense of on-court composure in addition to their raw athleticism and aerial skills, following the appointment of former Australia coach Jill McIntosh as technical director.
“Hopefully they think I do know something about it now”.
She said: “We were in that game for three-quarters of it. Some passing errors at crucial times let us down”.
“To come into a World Cup without a four-year build-up is hard. We’ve put everything on the floor so far, it will continue tomorrow”.
More impressively, the victory was orchestrated largely by the Diamonds’ young bench, with senior starting players all deliberately rested by Coach Lisa Alexander.