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Minor premiers Melbourne Vixens cruised through to the trans-Tasman netball competition grand final with a crushing 58-43 major semi-final win over Waikato/Bay of Plenty Magic at Melbourne’s Hisense Arena on Sunday.
Coach Julie Hoornweg rated the win as her team’s best performance of the year.
The Magic started well as the Vixens made a few early turnovers, but minor premiers Melbourne completely dominated the remainder of the match.
They will host the July 27 grand final back at Hisense Arena against the winner of next Sunday’s preliminary final.
The Magic, who lost successive games for the first time in the history of the ANZ Championship, will host the preliminary final against the winner of Monday’s elimination minor semi between the Thunderbirds and Southern Steel in Adelaide.
Without injured wing attack Frances Solia and pregnant defender Leana de Bruin, the Magic were unable to turn the tide once Melbourne got on a roll.
The Vixens outscored the visitors by six goals in each of the first two quarters to lead 30-24 at halftime.
The relentless Vixens outscored the Magic 14-7 in the third quarter and 14-12 in the final term.
Magic coach Noeline Taurua brought on Halana Leith and Nicola Pettit for the third quarter and moved around Joline Henry, Laura Langman and Casey Williams but nothing worked for the New Zealand team.
Hoornweg made just one change, resting skipper Sharelle McMahon for part of the final quarter but otherwise retained the rest of her starting seven.
“It’s certainly our best performance for the year. There was a lot of pressure on and a big crowd,” Hoornweg told AAP.
“It was amazing to come out and play that sort of netball in those circumstances.”
She revealed a tactical switch had helped her turn around the seven-goal loss to the magic in round 10, but was coy about revealing details.
“We tried something new but haven’t tried much all year, but we’ve been practising it during the week and it seemed to work really well for us,” Hoornweg said.
Pressed to reveal more, Hoornweg said: “We’ll keep it under our hat for the next game.”
Taurua still found some positives with the Magic’s performance compared to their franchise-record 19-goal thrashing by the Thunderbirds in Adelaide last weekend.
“I know it sounds a bit weird but I’m feeling a bit better this week than I did last week,” Taurua said.
“We started strongly, better than we did last week, so that was a good thing and there were some nice areas of play, both on attack and defence.”
While Hoornweg described Melbourne’s defence as “amazing”, Taurua was more impressed with the Vixen’s offence.
The Magic were also hurt by conceding more penalties than Melbourne.
“We got penalised quite a bit, not only from the Australian umpire, but also our own New Zealand umpire, so that’s something we’ve got to get better at and adjust faster than we did,” Taurua said.
“But in saying that, there’s no excuse for us losing the game. We were beaten by the better team and we’ve got to pick up next week.”
Leith suffered a knee injury in the final quarter and Taurua said it could be an anterior cruciate ligament damage, but couldn’t confirm that until after a scan.