AUSTRALIA won the third match of its series against England on Wednesday night after ultimately pulling away late in the match.

Especially after how things went during the second match of the series, the fact that the Diamonds were able to respond in the way that they did really impressed coach Stacey Marinkovich.

“Full respect to England, the way they played that second series and certainly the way they came out tonight. We knew that it was going to be a really tough battle and I don’t think the score necessarily reflects how tight and tough it is actually out there, and we really challenged the girls around that,” Marinkovich said. 

“Just generally hard work, to be able to be in the contest, to be able to apply pressure for long periods of time. I thought we really turned that around in our defence, and I thought we got some ball speed, we let the ball go, we got some good changes of direction.

“We just applied things to the structures that we understood were going to be in front of us.”

For much of the match it looked like Australia’s starting seven was going to run out the full match, but two changes were made late, with Sophie Dwyer and Kate Moloney coming on for Kiera Austin and Paige Hadley respectively.

Marinkovich explained why those changes were made, with one change forced and one tactical.

“I guess we wanted to keep the run going out. Paige had a little bit of cramping, so that’s where Kate came on probably really late in the game,” Marinkovich said.

“But Sophie, we wanted to keep finishing quarters out, and I think that’s the part we sort of lacked in the last couple of minutes of the first and second quarter. So we just want to make sure that we’re attacking all five minute blocks of every quarter and been able to put out a really strong 60-minute performance.”

Speaking of Austin, she won the Player of the Match for Wednesday and Player of the Series, and Marinkovich was really happy with how Austin played throughout the series.

“She did a great job, and I think as Liz alluded to earlier, she’s had a great SSN season and it’s the ability to be able to transfer that into international and against different opponents that you don’t see regularly and she’s certainly getting that movement pattern that we’re really liking and certainly creates a lot of option for us in either playmaking or threat to post,” Marinkovich said.