Painful viewing of World Cup loss steels skipper
More than two months after Australia’s heartbreaking World Cup final loss to New Zealand, captain Caitlin Bassett finally watched a replay as she prepared for tomorrow’s opening Constellation Cup match.
It wasn’t her first choice of in-flight movie en route to Christchurch, but Bassett said she needed to watch it before the first of the four Tests.
“After the final we just packed the loss away in a place to deal with it later,” she said.
“But for our best preparation for this series I had to look at the last game we played and that was it.”
While the outcome still hurt, what Bassett found was that they didn’t play badly in the one-point loss.
“There were a few simple errors – passing and connection errors,” the goal shooter said. “But you don’t throw out everything because of one loss.”
The Diamonds may have surrendered their status as world champions but have retained the world No.1 ranking and are desperate to keep a hold of the Constellation Cup.
They have held the transTasman trophy for the past six years and lost it only once since its inception in 2010.
Bassett said they wouldn’t be content with just winning the Cup – they wanted to win all four games.
After Christchurch they play in Auckland on Wednesday night followed by matches in Sydney (October 20) and Perth (October 27).
There are four new players in the squad: Ash Brazill and Tegan Phillip, who both haven’t played a Test since 2016, and possible debutantes Maddy Turner and Laura Scherian.
Aged 31, Scherian will be as the oldest Diamonds debutant in history if she gets on the court. — Melissa Woods