"It will be good not to have that heavy pressure on us but going into it you still want to win," midfield dynamo and captain Anita Punt said yesterday.
"It helps build confidence, especially for the younger girls, that we can play well and beat them. So we're not going just to compete."
The women then have the world league finals in Rosario, Argentina, at the end of the year, which will act as an authentic prelude to the Olympics. Seven of the world's top eight ranked countries will be there.
There are a couple of other tournaments in the pipeline and the women will find they get a pile of opportunity and support.
How the men's national team must envy them.
They have put themselves on a slippery slope by failing to secure their ticket to Rio at the world league semifinal in Buenos Aires in June. Losses to Canada in a marathon shootout, then Spain - both ranked several places lower than New Zealand's seventh - cost them dear.
Yesterday another plank was pulled from beneath them when Olympic hosts Brazil beat the United States in a penalty shootout at the Pan Am championships in Toronto.
That meant the 37th-ranked Brazilians fulfilled the criteria for contesting the Olympics by making the top six.
New Zealand desperately needed Brazil to miss out, thereby leaving one extra space open.
The qualification process is complex, but the upshot is Ireland, world No 14, are expected to take a place in the field which might otherwise have been seventh-ranked New Zealand's. Of course, all that doom and gloom can be washed away if New Zealand beat Australia in Stratford.
Both Olympic tournaments have four places left, reserved for the champions of Africa, Europe, Oceania and a space left once performances are recalibrated and compared from the world league events.
New Zealand beat Australia on penalties in the Azlan Shah tournament in Malaysia in April and are competitive against their neighbours.
Still, it's not how they saw their qualification bid playing out.
