New Zealand and Australia are set to continue their epic battle in today's world championship final.
The teams have met 67 times over the years, Australia winning 43, drawing two and losing 22.
Two of their most memorable wins have been in finals; at last year's Commonwealth Games, Australia took the game
57-55 in extra time and at the 1999 world championship the Silver Ferns led by six going into the final quarter only to lose by one in the last minute.
Six members of the 1999 team, captain Liz Harby-Williams, vice-captain Liz Ellis, Sharelle McMahon, Rebecca Sanders, Janine Illitch and Peta Scholz are in Jamaica.
Harby-Williams and Sanders will retire from international netball after the final. It will also be the swansong for Nicole Richardson.
Jill McIntosh, who has been the Australian coach for nine years, and taken the team to two world and two Commonwealth Games titles, will also bow out.
Harby-Williams, in the team for 11 years, has shared all of McIntosh's triumphs.
"You're always hungry [to win] but in my mind we don't have a choice, we just have to win," she said.
The feeling is the same for the four New Zealand squad members who played in that infamous 1999 final: captain Anna Rowberry, Lesley Nicol, Adine Harper and Belinda Colling.
"It'll be nice to come away at the end and not have the New Zealand public think the Silver Ferns are not capable of finishing off a big competition," said Colling, who captained the Silver Ferns in 1999.
Colling's shooting let her down in 1999 but in this tournament she has consistently landed over 80 per cent, with Irene van Dyk averaging over 90 per cent.
- NZPA
