The Australian Diamonds saw off their first real challenge of the Netball World Cup after Malawi became the first team to win a quarter against them and held them at 28-all at half-time. While the Diamonds produced a dominant performance to win 70-46, Malawi proved to be a much-improved side from the one they faced at the 2019 World Cup and an entirely different prospect to what they are used to.
"We spoke as a team and earmarked this game, knowing it was going to give us a bit of everything. Malawi are a team that can hold possession, they have some physicality, good body presence and are very athletic. They are persistent in their movement. The line of the ball and the pace in which they play is a little unorthodox. It was a tussle," Diamonds coach Stacey Marenkovich said.
"That's the exciting part of the World Cup: you get to see different ways the game is played. Until you step out on court against it, you only have an idea. We don't play like that. That's the reality. That's the greatness of World Cups. It's about who can adapt and shift and whose brand of netball is going to stand up against anybody in any situation. If we played it more regularly, you'd get a better understanding."
Sixth-ranked Malawi are the highest ranked team Australia have played at the tournament so far and they're finding it difficult to gauge how their 24-goal win would stack up against other opposition as they prepare for their final second-round match against third ranked England.
Their last opportunity to test themselves before the knockouts, the one-sided scorelines of the opening matches have shone a light on the lopsided nature of the tournament.
The only matches won by fewer than 10 goals were Tonga's five goal win over Fiji, Malawi's six goal win over Scotland, Fiji's four goal win over Zimbabwe and Wales' eight goal victory over Sri Lanka, and all those took place in the first round. While there have been some close matches among the bottom four teams since then, the second round has lacked cut-throat competition so far, and there are calls for the tournament structure to be relooked at.
Current South Africa and former Australia coach Norma Plummer offered an alternative format after the Proteas defeat to Jamaica, where she proposed that the tournament be split into two groups. In Plummer's ideal structure, the World Cup would be contested by the teams ranked in the top eight only while the next eight ranked teams would still participate but compete for a "shield or something," with a promotion/relegation system in place.
"If you have the top eight, where you play everybody, you will find games like the one between us and Jamaica and that to me will lift the game up a notch for people to watch and enjoy," Plummer said. "But it will give teams in the bottom eight bracket an opportunity for promotion so that they can move up.
"For me, you need all the top teams playing against one another, where No. 1 and 2 play for the gold medal and No. 3 and 4 for the bronze medal and all the others go into the rankings. It is still 16 teams. But this is just my idea, and I am not on World Netball."
Asked whether she had heard about or agreed with Plummer's idea, Diamonds coach Marinkovich would not be drawn into an answer, saying she hadn't considered it because she'd "been focused on how we need to play this tournament."
Earlier in the competition, Marinkovoch was asked a similar question, specifically whether Australia would like to see stronger opposition more regularly in the lead-up to the semi-finals, and said Australia were doing their homework in preparation. "The draw is what it is. We have eyes on them (the other top four-ranked opposition)."
For shooter Steph Wood, that means playing the Australian way against all the opposition, no matter who they are.
"We challenge ourselves when the teams we are coming up against are lower-ranked. We still want to make sure we are putting out the brand of netball we want to play because with that we believe we can beat any side in this competition," Wood told ESPN after the Malawi game. "The draw is the way the draw is, but we just continue to challenge ourselves with this brand."
Wood was named MVP with a shooting percentage of 94.7, her highest of the tournament so far.
"A big one for me today was my shooting percentage. I thought it had been a bit down so far," she said after she'd scored 31 out of 39 goals before the Diamonds match-up with Malawai, a shooting percentage of under 80. "I wanted to improve that, as well as my work rate in defence. I think overall, as a team, we are looking pretty good at the moment, but England will be a big test for us."
Australia have a rest day on Wednesday before gearing up for the business end of the competition with an early game against England on Thursday and the knockouts from Saturday.