Taurua keen to recapture initiative

Opening a win streak against the Diamonds is never a walk in the park — especially on Australian soil.

But that’s the challenge Noeline Taurua’s Silver Ferns will have to rise to if they wish to win the Constellation Cup for the first time in seven years.

The transtasman series is tied at 1-1 after the Diamonds hit back with a 48-42 victory over the Ferns at Auckland’s Spark Arena on Wednesday night.

As the series now moves across the ditch, the Ferns will have to re-establish their dominance in Sydney today to keep alive hopes of claiming the title.

Set to come up against the support of passionate Australian fans, Taurua said the Ferns faced a big challenge in Sydney and Perth.

“Going on their soil, it’s going to be totally different,” Taurua said. “So instead of looking at it as four games in total, we’re taking it one game at a time.

“Every game in itself is a battle . . . it’s not necessarily about the Constellation Cup, even though that is obviously the clear outcome. Sydney is totally a different beast.

“We’ll be putting all the bread and butter into what we need over the next couple of days and preparing ourselves as good as possible.”

Diamonds coach Lisa Alexander was relieved to be heading home with a win. However, that didn’t stop her from being wary of becoming too comfortable with the series still on the line.

“Home courts, we are generally favourites, but we’ve done this before where we lost two matches in Australia,” Alexander said.

“I feel like we’ll get a big contest against the Silver Ferns again. They have got a lot of pride in their performance as well but we’ve put ourselves in a great position for the rest of the series now, which is really positive. We can go home and feel like winners.”

The Silver Ferns and Australian Diamonds go head-to-head in the third test today at 3pm NZT.

The final game is in Perth next Sunday.

We’ll be putting all the bread and butter into what we need over the next couple of days and preparing ourselves.

Silver Ferns coach Noeline Taurua