England made it three wins from three at the Melbourne Commonwealths 2006 with a 78-18 thrashing of a spirited St Vincent and the Grenadines. This win puts England on top of their group, ahead of New Zealand only on points difference; tomorrow (Wednesday 22nd March) will see the long awaited clash between the two.

Once again, all of England’s players got some valuable court time, and experience. Louisa Brownfield (Mavericks) was the game’s top-scorer with 26 goals from 30 attempts. England play New Zealand on Wednesday (22 March) and South Africa on Thursday (23 March).

England’s captain, Olivia Murphy, said:

We wanted to start strongly and get a good score in the first quarter, and give all of our players some Commonwealth Games experience. We’re building all the time for our games against New Zealand and South Africa, so we wanted to improve with each game … We’ve got a day without a game tomorrow and then we will need to improve again against New Zealand.

We’re progressing nicely, but we now need to step-up a couple of levels against New Zealand. We’re looking forward to the challenge of playing the number one team in the world.

The past three games provided some essential match experience for some of England’s more green players, but now they have two crunch matches that will really tell a story.