World champions Australia again proved their superiority over South Africa as they won their first International, in Bendigo, 64-53 after the Proteas had started well enough to share the first quarter.
The Proteas had come into this match with at least ten matches under their belt for 2025 while the Australian Diamonds were playing their first international of the year. The two have met 46 times and Australia are yet to taste defeat.
Coach Jenny van Dyk has maintained that to be the best you will need to play against the best – and this is what South Africa was doing Down Under. While the Aussie Diamonds were the ones to get on the scoring board first, going three points clear in the opening few minutes of the opening quarter, the showed character and at the end of the first quarter the teams were locked at 14-all.
In the second quarter, the Aussies pulled away from the Proteas and as both teams went to half time, it was Australia who were leading 34-26.
Van Dyk made a few changes going into the third quarter with the introduction of Owethu Ngubane and Sanmarie Visser in place of Khanyisa Chawane and Shadine van der Merwe. At the end of the quarter, the Proteas had scored 15 goals in response to Australia’s 16. Overall score after 45 minutes was 50-41 to Australia.
With Tarle Mathe’s legs growing tired, Van Dyk brought in Refiloe Nketsa in the centre to strengthen the midcourt. Australia kept applying the pressure though and won 64-53.
Reflecting on the game, Van Dyk said “To be honest, it wasn’t a bad game for us as South Africa, taking on the best in the world is never an easy task but we did it. Our first quarter was good and everything that went wrong for us was in the second quarter. We lost the third quarter by a single point which demonstrated good game performance from our end. We know that we can be competitive as a team, there is a lot of improvement from our end. Our aim with the next match is to win, not just compete.”
