Australian Diamonds

Royal Park, 1938

The Australian Diamonds are the direct descendants of the first international netball match ever played. On 20 August 1938, at Royal Park in Melbourne, Australia beat New Zealand 40-11. Nearly nine decades on, the same fixture still anchors the Australian season: the two sides meet four more times between 18 and 28 October 2026.

What followed that first win was a stretch of dominance with few parallels in team sport. Australia has won twelve Netball World Cups - 1963, 1971, 1975, 1979, 1983, 1991, 1995, 1999, 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2023 - and the heaviest margin in the team's history remains a 113-12 win over Singapore in 1991. Liz Ellis's 122 caps is still the national record. The present side is coached by Stacey Marinkovich, who took the job in 2020, and captained by Liz Watson of Sunshine Coast Lightning.

Gold as the default setting

At the Commonwealth Games the pattern was close to mechanical. From netball's introduction to the programme at Kuala Lumpur in 1998, Australia took gold in 1998, 2002, 2014 and 2022, and silver in 2006, 2010 and 2018 - a medal at every Games, and never worse than second across seven of them.

The year-to-year work, though, is the Constellation Cup, a four-test series against New Zealand contested every October since 2010. Australia has won twelve of the fifteen editions, losing only in 2012, 2021 and 2024. The 2025 series showed both why the rivalry sells and why its format had become a problem. Australia won the opening two tests - 69-52 at John Cain Arena on 17 October and 68-51 at Qudos Bank Arena on 22 October - then lost 61-52 at Globox Arena on 26 October and 62-57 at Wolfbrook Arena in Christchurch on 29 October. Two wins each sent the series to a 14-minute decider, which Australia took 12-11 when Sophie Garbin scored with four seconds left. The cost was heavy: defender Sunday Aryang tore an anterior cruciate ligament during the extra period.

Glasgow, and the first semi-final they have lost

The 2026 Commonwealth Games, with all twelve nations playing at the OVO Hydro, broke the sequence. On 2 August, Jamaica beat Australia 46-45 in the semi-final, Sophie Dwyer's shot at the buzzer coming off the rim with extra time on the line. Australia had been four down with four minutes to play. Marinkovich had taken Kiera Austin off with seven minutes remaining and sent Dwyer on, an untried combination against the Jamaican defenders Shamera Sterling-Humphrey and Latanya Wilson. Courtney Bruce conceded 14 contacts and five obstructions. Georgie Horjus, the form domestic player of the season, did not take the court at all.

Kate Moloney's assessment afterwards was flat: 'It's a full team loss today, it's not on one person... we just couldn't execute at really critical moments.' It was the first time in Games history that Australia had missed the netball gold-medal match. New Zealand went on to beat Jamaica 56-48 in the final, ending a sixteen-year wait for Commonwealth gold.

Less than twenty hours later, in a 9am bronze-medal match, Australia beat England 68-50 - a first Commonwealth bronze for a programme that had previously only ever collected gold or silver. 'We had such a quick time to process what happened, I think a lot of us still feel quite numb,' Jo Weston said. Marinkovich put it down to grit: 'That took a lot of grit to be able to go out there and get that result.' Austin read the tournament as a sign of something broader: 'Gone are the days where it's just one or two nations really dominating.'

The fourteen named on 22 September

Netball Australia named a 14-player Constellation Cup squad on 22 September 2026: Kiera Austin, Courtney Bruce, Sophie Dwyer, Sophie Garbin, Matilda Garrett, Jessie Grenvold, Georgie Horjus, Sarah Klau, Cara Koenen, Kate Moloney, Amy Parmenter, Jamie-Lee Price, Donnell Wallam and Liz Watson. Watson captains and Moloney is vice-captain, with a team of twelve to be named before each match. Bruce is in line to become the seventh Diamonds centurion. Grenvold, of Melbourne Mavericks, is still uncapped. Weston was unavailable for the series, and Grenvold, Parmenter and Wallam return after sitting as Commonwealth Games reserves.

One selection took most of the attention. Sarah Klau, 31, was fined $5,000 and handed a suspended two-match ban on 17 September after pleading guilty to common assault, having kicked a security guard outside a Sydney pub when refused entry. The disciplinary action followed her failure to disclose the matter to Netball Australia before the Commonwealth Games. She was named in the squad five days later.

Goal percentage, not extra time

The series has been rewritten since last October. Reported on 28 September 2026, the extra-time decider used in 2025 has been dropped. If the four tests finish two apiece, the Cup now goes to the side with the better goal percentage - goals scored divided by goals conceded across the series - and if that is level, the holders keep it, which currently means Australia. The change followed a 2025 decider in which Aryang's knee went and New Zealand players cramped through the additional fourteen minutes.

In practice it restores the weight of margin: a drawn series will be settled by the scoreboard across all four tests rather than by a fifth mini-match. Te Paea Selby-Rickit welcomed the change on injury grounds. Silver Ferns coach Dame Noeline Taurua was blunter about the whole question: 'The best way is just to do three-zip or four-zip and not worry about it.'

Two home dates, then a home World Cup

The 16th Constellation Cup, confirmed on 24 June 2026, opens in New Zealand - Spark Arena, Auckland on Sunday 18 October, then Wolfbrook Arena, Christchurch on Wednesday 21 October - before two Australian dates: the Sydney Olympic Park arena now called Afterpay Arena on Sunday 25 October at 4pm, and John Cain Arena, Melbourne on Wednesday 28 October at 7.30pm. Tickets for both home matches went on sale in September, through Ticketek for Sydney and AXS for Melbourne. Fox Sports holds the Australian broadcast, on Foxtel, Kayo and BINGE.

Everything beyond October points at Sydney. The Netball World Cup runs from 25 August to 5 September 2027 at Qudos Bank Arena, sixteen teams, a netball capacity of 18,000. Australia qualified automatically as host and goes in as the defending champion from 2023; five sides took places on world rankings dated 4 December 2025, with the remaining ten decided through continental qualifiers between August and October 2026. The October tests are the first full assembly of this group since Glasgow, and the main competitive block before the home tournament.