DESPITE having already lost the series, the Australian Diamonds still came away from Wednesday night’s final Constellation Cup match with something to smile about having convincingly won the final test.

Reflecting on it all post match, Diamonds’ head coach Stacey Marinkovich described the importance of winning the match to bookend the year as “huge”.

“I think what we said was that this was a moment to set where we wanted the direction to go and I think that’s really important,” Marinkovich explained.

“We don’t have an international game for quite some time now. We’ve got a camp in January so we wanted to make sure that one, we take learning so we know what we’re going to do, but we wanted to make sure that we put out a performance to understand what our performance really looked like, and I just thought the tenacity of the girls.

“We chased down the loose balls, we were first to it, which we’d been lacking and I just think we just relaxed, just played and you could tell that they were enjoying it. There were some smiles, there were some high fives and we celebrated the moments in the moment as opposed to just worrying about what was next all the time.”

Having joined her coach for the post match chat, star shooter Kiera Austin described how the Diamonds were trying to find their passion and enjoyment again in the match.

“I think it was just finding that enjoyment again. Whenever you play international netball, you obviously put so much pressure on yourself and that doesn’t fall away when you play New Zealand, if anything, it really intensifies,” Austin explained.

“And I think we were obviously so disappointed in the three games we had prior, so going back to what we know best, enjoying the netball that we play. We obviously love the brand of netball that we play, and that’s probably the first time we really saw it in that series. So, lots of learnings to take going forward.”

Marinkovich also said that there had been plenty of learnings for her side to come out of the series.

“I think there’s a part where there is an expectation and I guess trying to be up all the time and trying to find what’s next,” Marinkovich said.

“It’s what a high performance environment is all about, but I think also we’ve got to be able to recognize what we’re good at and celebrate that and just keep that as the backbone of what we’re doing.

“And we’ve got to make sure that we continue to see the whole squad and being able to play roles at different times. I think just the way that international netball is going, it is super tight and you’ve got to be at your best, and sometimes you do need rotations and versatility and we’re in the build.”