If revenge is a dish best served cold then Australia dished up hosts England a liberal portion of double helpings.<\/p>\n
Four years after Helen Housby\u2019s last-gasp heroics denied them netball gold on the Gold Coast, in front of their disbelieving home fans, they plucked the Roses petal by petal in a one-sided Commonwealth Games semi-final.<\/p>\n
Jess Thirlby\u2019s team arrived with confidence brimming after a win over world champions New Zealand; in contrast, the Diamonds were reeling from a shock defeat to Jamaica, who they now take on in Sunday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n
However, they took the lead early and never relinquished it, their high-pressure game asking questions that England simply failed to answer.<\/p>\n
They will now need to reset their sights on another match with the Silver Ferns for bronze, the same medal they won at the 2019 World Cup in Liverpool.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to acknowledge this loss and own it,\u201d said captain Natalie Metcalf. \u201cWe\u2019re a really close group and we don\u2019t want to leave the Games with nothing to show for it. They got ahead too early, too soon and we gave ourselves too much work to do. We just didn\u2019t look after our turn on the ball well enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re taking lots of confidence from the fact we beat New Zealand in the group stages and there is still so much to play for. We\u2019re gutted not to be able to make the final but it\u2019s really important that we regroup and pull together. We\u2019ve got to look at what went wrong and correct that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thirlby made changes to her starting line-up, drafting in the experienced Jo Harten to replace the in-form Eleanor Cardwell in front of the post.<\/p>\n
But that wasn\u2019t where the game was lost. The experienced Geva Mentor, in her sixth Games appearance, struggled to exert herself on Australia\u2019s free-scoring Gretel Bueta, while the Diamonds had a vice-like grip on centre court, England clearing missed Serena Guthrie who announced her retirement earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSport is brutal,\u201d said Thirlby. \u201cIf you play well and lose, you can get your head around it but we just gave ourselves a mountain to climb.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was nothing in there we didn\u2019t expect but we were found wanting for ball and that\u2019s uncharacteristic for us. Australia were too smart but we expected more of ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joanna Weston of Australia and England\u2019s Eleanor Cardwell compete under the post <\/p>\n
(Getty)<\/p>\n
Thirlby knows what it\u2019s like to lose a semi-final at the Commonwealth Games on home soil \u2013 and then the bronze medal consolation game that follows it.<\/p>\n
And Housby, the hero four years ago, said they\u2019ll be no wallowing in this defeat, while admitting England were less than impressed by some of the officiating calls in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were better and smarter than us, we had periods in the game where we matched them but they were not consistent,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA medal is still a medal, so playing for bronze against New Zealand is going to be huge. We\u2019ve got one over on them already but you can\u2019t rely on that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving a loss like that really puts into perspective everything we have to work on so we\u2019ll go back to the drawing board and hopefully come back really strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
National Lottery players raise more than \u00a330m a week for good causes including vital funding into sport \u2013 from grassroots to elite. Find out how your numbers make amazing happen at lotterygoodcauses.org.uk and get involved by using the hashtag #TNLAthletes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If revenge is a dish best served cold then Australia dished up hosts England a liberal portion of double helpings. Four years after Helen Housby\u2019s last-gasp heroics denied them netball gold on the Gold Coast, in front of their disbelieving home fans, they plucked the Roses petal by petal in a one-sided Commonwealth Games semi-final. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n