The Diamonds have won Australia’s 1000th Commonwealth Games gold medal, restoring their netball supremacy by beating Jamaica in the final.
Australia went into the Birmingham Games on 934 golds, with the two wins at the unofficial 1911 Festival Of Empire not counting.
The netball win was Australia’s seventh gold medal on Sunday.
The Diamonds stripped the smiles from Jamaica’s ‘Sunshine Girls’ in a revenge triumph .
Stacey Marinkovich’s team managed to defuse the threat of the world’s best player Jhaniele Fowler as they prevailed 55-51 at the National Exhibition Centre Arena in a thrilling final.
Three days after they’d let a four-quarter, six-point lead slip against the Fowler-inspired side and in the teeth of shrill, noisy support for the underdog Jamaicans, the Diamonds, as has become familiar, were not about to slip up twice.
Gretel Bueta, with a perfect 37 goals from 37 attempts, combined superbly with Cara Koenen (11 from 11) up front while Courtney Bruce led the Diamonds’ fine defensive effort.
This was their fourth Commonwealth title to go with 11 World Cups and six Quad Series wins, re-establishing them as one of global sport’s dominant teams.
The Australians had begun impressively, suffocating the Jamaicans in defence to open up a six-goal lead and they were still up 14-12 at the end of the quarter.
But the complexion quickly changed with Fowler the focal point of the quicker transitions as they moved four points clear, prompting Marinkovich to introduce Sarah Klau as goalkeeper to quell the dominance of the superstar Jamaican shooter, who was owning Courtney Bruce.
It was the Aussies’ turn to fight back and take the high-quality match into the halftime break at 29-29.
But the Diamonds blasted out after the break, with Bruce, by now playing a dominant role at goal defence, pumping her fist at an early turnover which prompted a run of seven straight Australian points.
The lead increased to 10 before the Jamaicans pulled it back to six going into the final quarter – ominously for the Aussies, the same deficit they had in Thursday’s match.
This time, though, they were not about to let it slip, although there were a few nerves when the deficit was briefly reduced to just three with the brilliant Fowler ending with 46 goals from 47 attempts.
© AAP 2022
