AFTER a long injury lay off, Diamonds captain Liz Watson is raring to go ahead of the upcoming Quad Series.

This Quad series will be the first netball action for Watson in almost a year, after she injured her foot in March last year and was ruled out of the 2021 Suncorp Super Netball season.

Diamonds coach Stacey Marinkovich said that Watson has done all that she has to do to be available for selection, but they still need to work out how to manage her best across the entire tournament.

“Liz has done all the preparation coming in to this event so she’s open and up for selection to be able to be out on court and putting her best foot forward for the team and taking on that leadership both on and off the court which is extremely exciting for us as a group,” she said. “In terms of court time, there are some things that we need to work across the entire championships, but she’ll be ready and raring to go,”

There are many younger players in the squad for this quad series, including the likes of Sophie Dwyer and Sunday Aryang.

With a lot of new faces coming into the squad, many might feel that there is a changing of the guard happening withing the Australian Diamonds setup. Watson certainly does not think so.

“Nah, I think there’s a bit of experience, there’s some new players as well, and that always happens when you’ve tours that go from year to year,” she said.

“Look I think it is just an exciting time. “It’s great to have young faces in the team, and when you see those girls debut it adds a little bit of fresh air and excitement in the group as well. So, I think we’re on a really nice path with this team.”

Despite being skipper of the side, Watson said that it was the role of the whole team to make sure that those younger players feel welcome and settled in.

“Everyone has been so welcoming and actually speaking to the young ones like Sunday and Sophie, they both feel very comfortable in this environment and that’s just a credit to the whole squad,” she said. “So it’s definitely not mine or Steph’s (Steph Wood, vice-captain) responsibility, everyone has made them feel welcome. “They’ve had lots of time to just immerse themselves into the team, they are playing really well, they contribute, so that’s what we want from not just our debutants, our whole team.”

In addition to this, although the shooting end is not the most experienced group of players, Watson is not worried about how that will affect the team.

“You know we’ve got so much experience down there I still think with Steph and even Gretel (Gretel Bueta) and how these players play at their local clubs as well, they’ve definitely got that experience and leadership as well.”