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We're midway through the Netball Nations Cup and Australia remains undefeated after the London-leg of the tour, having already secured a spot in the final before their last round-robin match against Uganda early Sunday morning.
After the Nations Cup final wraps early Monday morning, the players will get a week off before linking up with their Super Netball teams again, who are now well and truly in pre-season mode.
Diamonds assistant coach Nicole Richardson is the new assistant under former Roses coach Tracey Neville for the incoming Mavericks team — she will be straight back to Melbourne to continue their inaugural season prep.
Richardson has worked hard to put the demons of last year behind her, but the ghost of the now-defunct Collingwood Magpies team she head-coached for three seasons reared its head again over the past week in more controversy.
Last year, the AFL club decided to withdraw from Super Netball for financial reasons, despite receiving a lucrative Nike sponsorship due to the female athletes in both footy and netball present at the club, as well as a $15 million federal government infrastructure grant to improve facilities for women’s sports teams.
The recent drama was sparked by a video uploaded to Collingwood's social media, which has not gone down well, where AFL star Jeremy Howe showed fans the freshly-laid synthetic grass to form a new training area over the old netball court.
"The boys are going to have a hell of a time in here," Howe says in a video that has more than 1.6 million views across their social media accounts.
Although Collingwood says the club personally paid for the court to be covered, it didn't take long for people online to start drawing conclusions between the federal government grant and all of the recent upgrades at Collingwood HQ.
What was even more damaging, was the Pies' response to this criticism, choosing to hide comments that mentioned the netball team and even blocking some of their diehard fans that did so.
"Look, I've tried to move on from it all," Richardson said when asked about the viral video, "It was a time in my life that was very tough and emotional for the entire playing and staff group."
"I mean the facility looks amazing, I must say that, but I think the toughest thing for me is that Collingwood netball was a part of the football club for seven years and yet from all reports, you can now walk into their building, and you wouldn’t even know that they ever had a netball team.
"For me, that's the saddest thing that there's nothing to show for our history visually at that club."
Richardson said she has been pleased to join the Mavericks, where the netball team is treated like a priority, despite the Sport Entertainment Network also owning several basketball teams.
She also agreed with sentiments that the Pies video felt tone-deaf.
"I would agree with that," Richardson said.
"At the end of the day, they are a football club and the powers that be didn't see a place for netball within the facility, but it is disappointing in terms of that money that came in was all in relation to women's sport and to then promote the new facility, they could have at least used a female athlete in that video.
"The AFLW footballers will still get an opportunity to use that field so it will benefit them, but sport is a business and I've moved on.
"I'm very happy to be working with the Diamonds and given another opportunity within the Super Netball environment at the Melbourne Mavericks — that's where my attention is focused now mentally and emotionally."
For Richardson and the Diamonds, as the Nations Cup now heads to Leeds, the very first meeting between the She Cranes and Diamonds will precede a head-to-head battle between England and New Zealand for the remaining spot in the series decider.
Australia previously beat old trans-Tasman rivals the Silver Ferns in their opening match 63-50, before facing a tougher fight against the Roses 61-59.
So far, the world number one team have not been fan favourites, experiencing a crowd very similar to that of the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, where the English game-goers cheered for anyone but the Diamonds.
Pleasingly, the coaching staff believe the Diamonds have done well to withstand this pressure — which peaked in the fourth quarter of their match against the Roses.
Despite Australia getting out to a nine-goal lead early in the game, the hosts swung momentum before final break with an 11-goal turnaround to take the lead.
Richardson told ABC Sport the team's ability to get back to basics and convert 16 centre passes while snaring a crucial turnover through goal keeper Sarah Klau was the difference in those last 15 minutes.
Beyond results, Richardson also said the coaches had achieved several goals they set for the tournament to blood combinations and test players in new roles.
"We had some questions that we needed to answer coming across here," she said.
"We're evolving our combinations and testing new ones, we're having a look at players in starting positions compared to the subs and how they can make an impact, so we're ticking a lot of boxes, including that win-loss box."
The team have definitely been the most dominant of the series but are still looking for a complete performance and Richardson suggested this could be caused by all the substitutions the coaches have made – 30 in total across two matches.
With a week off before the next set of games happen, the team have actually got the ability to train on this tour – something they normally don’t have time for in series with tighter schedules.
Richardson says they'll get one day off to do some sight-seeing, but otherwise they'll be busy preparing to face Uganda and trying to work out ways to shut down 2.01m tall shooter Mary Cholhok, who has shot 84 goals so far at 92 per cent.
Former Collingwood goal shooter Sophie Garbin has been a stand-out for the Diamonds thus far in the Nations Cup, striking up a fine combination with Giants goal attack Sophie Dwyer.
For the fifth time since Dwyer made her debut in late 2022, World Cup champion Garbin and 22-year-old Dwyer combined on the court, finishing off the match against New Zealand after coming off the bench.
The pair did enough to impress their coaches and were rewarded with a start together for just the second time in the match against the Roses, playing roughly 40 minutes before a change was needed.
"That combination has been good hasn't it?" Richardson said.
"Sophie Garbin is adding so much variety to her game at goal shooter and has enhanced her movement, being able to come out on extension and find a way back to the posts.
"But I think the big thing we've noticed these past two games is probably the growth in Sophie Dwyer's game at goal attack – she's confident to go to the post from distance and really strong on court."
Sunday, January 21: Australia 63 v New Zealand 50
Monday, January 22: England 59 v Australia 61
Sunday, January 28: Australia v Uganda – 2am AEDT
Monday, January 29: Third-place play-off – 1am AEDT
Monday, January 29: Final — 3:15am AEDT
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