As the Silver Ferns and Australia kick off their three-test battle for world supremacy in Wellington tonight, here are some facts and figures behind the rivalry ...
* Silver Ferns captain Bernice Mene is the joint youngest New Zealand international. Both Mene, in 1992, and Margaret Forsyth, in 1979, were
17 when they played their first tests.
* New Zealand's most-capped international is Sandra Edge, who played 94 tests between 1985-1995.
* The Silver Ferns squad includes three mothers - goal shoot Irene van Dyk, and mid-court pair Julie Seymour and Temepara George.
* Australian captain Kathy Harby-Williams is the first player in Australasia to become a fulltime netball professional. New Zealand's squad includes three teachers, Mene, Seymour and van Dyk, while the Australian 12 includes three students, Jane Altschwager, Sharelle McMahon and Bianca Chatfield.
* The Silver Ferns boast greater international experience than Australia. New Zealand have won a collective 357 caps - excluding the 12 won by Vilimaina Davu for Fiji and van Dyk's 72 for South Africa - to Australia's 289. Mene's 75 caps are one more than her Australian counterpart Harby-Williams. They are their respective teams most- capped individuals.
* The world's two netball powers have met 53 times since New Zealand toured Australia in 1938, losing 40-11. Australia have won 33 and New Zealand 18, with two games - 34-34 at the world championships in Auckland in 1975 and 27-27 at the Australia Games 10 years later - drawn.
* They have clashed 10 times at 10 world championships since Australia won by a solitary point, 37-36, in England in 1963. Australia have won seven of those games. New Zealand's two wins came at Perth in 1967, 40-34, and Glasgow in 1987, 39-28, with one drawn. Remarkably, in those 10 games each team has scored 406 points.
* And just in case things get as rough on court as some have predicted during the series, each squad has one police officer - Waikato mid-courter Jenny-May Coffin and South Australian wing defence Peta Squire.
