Netball: The new rivalry

Waimarama Taumaunu. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The new era in transtasman netball rivalry has begun and, well, aside from the coaches and the absence of a few familiar faces, not much has changed.

The present series, which wraps up in Melbourne on Sunday, is Waimarama Taumaunu's first in charge of the Silver Ferns since her sudden elevation two weeks ago.

Likewise Australia have not met the Ferns since Lisa Alexander arrived on the scene in her snappy lime blazer.

And the pair have picked up from where their predecessors left off, with the first two meetings shared at one game apiece - Taumaunu drew first blood in Perth, before Australia's reply in Adelaide on Wednesday.

The split results continue a remarkable run of matches dating back to September 2009 where the wins have alternated every game between the two sides.

After their most recent loss, New Zealand's results sheet against Australia over the last two years now reads: W-L-W-L-W-L-W-L-W-L.

It doesn't take a mathematician to work out what comes next in the sequence.

Yet before you put all your chips on black to take out the series this weekend, it would pay to delve a bit deeper into the history.

Unless you're a bookie with good links to the Pakistan cricket team, there can be no predetermined outcomes in any sport. But a transtasman netball test is sport at its unpredictable best. It is testament to the fierce rivalry between the top two netballing nations in the world that stringing together consecutive wins against each other is now considered a significant achievement.

The inability of either side to sustain a period of dominance over the other is mirrored in the games themselves.

Very rarely do you see a team lead a match from start to finish. Instead, the epic on-court duels are generally sea-sawing affairs - one team will produce a surge, then the other. Whichever team has the momentum come the dying minutes wins.

Just why neither team has been able to gain any ascendancy for longer than the space of a match in the past few years probably has a lot to do with the frequency of their meetings.

New Zealand have played Australia 102 times since their first international netball (or outdoor basketball as it was known back then) test match in 1938, yet around 45 per cent of those meetings have taken place in the past 10 years.

The two sides now know each other better than they ever have before. But rather than turning transtasman tests into a staid affair, this familiarity has bred more enthralling tussles as each sideare forced to dig further within themselves to find any little edge.

So who will lift the Constellation Cup on Sunday?

"It will be whoever brings their A-game on the day," said Silver Ferns captain Laura Langman.

Alexander has an even better cliche for you.

"I know it sounds a bit corny, but the sport of netball is really the winner. You have all sorts of people that watch sport, and they always say these contests are the ones they want to watch - and they may not be netball spectators normally," she said.

"So from our point of view that's just showing the measure of what we need to live up to on Sunday."

You can forgive them a few predictable lines when the action on court is anything but.