Tracey Neville
What a moment. It’s a dream as a player and I’m living it as a coach through the eyes of these players. It was a remarkable performance – I think we could have won by more and taken the game in the first quarter but they’re World Champions and we’ll take any win.
I was here at the 2015 Netball World Cup in Sydney – and the crowd are their 8th player. The form Australia had in this tournament was absolutely exceptional – we knew we had to put out the most cunning performance of our lives and we said we’ve got nothing to lose. We’re the underdogs and they’ve not been pushed yet in this tournament – let’s really test the changes and really test what they can do on court and we really tested that today. Those changes really helped our side and that’s a win.
Ama Agbeze
They gave us a tough game and we knew that they had been challenged throughout the whole competition. We knew that we had to step up to them and challenge them. They fought us well. We are grateful for the opportunity the Commonwealths have given us. We had a good contest and we are happy we came out as the winners.
I feel like I should be happier or crying. Everybody wants to just stay at home and look at their medals rather than going out. Hopefully it will sink in. We are going to go back to club competitions. The English girls have a game on Saturday. The Aussie girls start in about a week or two. I’m in New Zealand and we start in two or three weeks. We are just getting down from a high and coming back down to reality.
People were brought on to do specific jobs but I feel that the team on the whole were doing a really good job. There were changes to give people a break and let them come back on with impact or to put an impact change on with fresh legs. The changes yesterday and today were key to us winning
The Commonwealth Games is in my home town of Birmingham next time. I do love netball. The Aussies have been at the top for a long time and they do say it’s hard to stay at the top for a long time. Once you’re there you have to work really hard to stay there. This medal is just for today. There is a long way to go to get gold medals in any years time. It’s just more hard work now.
Unless you enjoy it, you can’t do it. We don’t play that many games in a year. In the last four years the games we play have stepped up. It’s all about training and so you have to enjoy it. A cultural thing in our team is having fun. You have to be relaxed. There is so much pressure with everyone wanting to win and everyone wanting you to win. When you smile, you relax and you have fun knowing that everybody has each other’s backs.
Beth Cobden
It’s unbelievable – I can’t believe it’s happened.
Jodie Gibson
We believed in the process and believed in every player on this team – so I definitely believed we were going to come home with this gold medal and I’m so happy we’ve achieved this.
Serena Guthrie
It’s so nice to be on the other side of that one-goal score-line. When you’ve got Madi Robinson in their front line, you know you’ve got your work cut out for you – she’s one of the worlds best and today we managed to slow her down and we were able to capitalize on them and sometimes that’s all you need to do. Just get those little wins throughout the game. And they did the same to us – there were ebbs and flows – but we were lucky enough at the end that it ebbed in our way.
It’s massive – we’ve got a home World Cup next year and we needed a build up really. Let’s enjoy the moment now, regroup and get up in 2019.
Geva Mentor
The belief within this squad has been inspiring. I really hope it lifts that profile on the elite level back in the UK – we know participation is high in the UK but we really need to cement our funding so we can really train full time because it shows how much it actually works – to be able to play in our World Cup in our back yard next year and hopefully come away with a great result there and cement what we’ve been able to achieve this year.
I’ve been at it for almost 20 years now and to finally be able to finally get it at my fifth Commonwealth Games – it’s always been alluding me. I’ve always dreamt that we could go all the way and I think you have to when you’re a sportsperson and that’s why it’s so gutting when you don’t walk away with your achievements. It’s so surreal, I’m just so proud of every single one of them and we’ve just got to keep pushing. The sky is the limit.
We’ve always had the skill and the talent but it’s about knowing how to win and knowing how to play those games, play the clock as well and play the scoreboard – that’s what we’ve learnt over these matches. Playing smart netball as a team and making sure we’re all on the same page.
The body feels great – I’ve got a long season ahead of me with Sunshine Coast Lightning, back into the international programme, fuelled up for a home Netball World Cup next year and just see how the body’s going and take it year by year.
Natalie Haythornthwaite
I feel incredible, I don’t think I can put it into words. I’ve actually just won.
We’re going to recover and celebrate – celebrate the goodness and the fact that we’ve never been in this position. We’re going to enjoy the moment and take it in.
It’s incredible for netball in England – we’ve made history. We made history yesterday by making the final and we’ve made history again by winning today. I’m absolutely over the moon. It means so much to us, we’ve worked so hard for this.
We’ve been building and building and building. We have the Quad Series regularly now and to get to play against the top country in the world is just great for us that we’ve got to this moment. We keep pinching ourselves that we’ve got the gold medal now. Hopefully this is just the start we want to keep building now.
I had every confidence in Helen today. It was the other way round yesterday when Jo scored it off Helen’s rebound and today Helen scored it off Jo’s rebound so we know that we’re a solid squad and we’ve got each other’s backs.
Chelsea did a great job at WA and having her as part of the squad has been incredible – I’m over the moon I got to play in the game. I’m so lucky I got to step on court and be there when we won and feel that and have all the girls run over to us and we all fell to the floor because we didn’t know what to do because this has never happened before.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to the fans. You never stopped believing in us. We read every single message and we all talk about the support we get from you so thank you.
