Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982), Wednesday 11 October 1978, page 11
Netball
team
in a jubilees challenged
Australia's world champions to tour
England
NSW player Michelle Collyer receives
the ball ahead oí her Tasmanian opponent in a tense match. Pictures are by David Hancock.
fr
UA
The Australian Women's
Netball team will chal-lenge England at London's Wembley Stadium in November, a fitting climax to the Australian Netball Association's Golden Jubilee year celebrations.
The women chosen to play for Australia were an-nounced, amid loud ap-plause, at a Jubilee Dinner held at Miranda, Sydney, recently. The waiting was over for the top players.
The announcement of the team capped a week of the keenest netball competition seen in Australia. The best of Australia's 273,000 players, 16 teams in all from every State (including the North
ern Territory for the first time) reached the finals for the 1978 Elix Trophy.
The last few minutes in a goal for goal final between South Australia and Victoria left both umpires straining to blast whistles above the noise at Miranda's Sutherland Shire netball complex.
As the whistle blew to end
the game 41-38 a Victorian grandstand of blue and white supporters roared their congratulations, lt was Victoria's second trophy.
There was more good news. Australian team selectors who had been choosing the top 10 players to go to England in
In the final of the 1978 Elix Trophy, SA goal attack Sharon Burton shoots for goal defended by
Victorian goal keeper Beth
Hancox who is also covering
SA's goal shooter. Kay Jessen.
BELOW: A player from SA leaps for the ball chased by Norma Plummer, Vic.
November, had chosen four out of the seven players from
Victoria.
The team is: captain, Margaret Caldow (Vic); vice captain, Sharon Burton (SA); Anne Simmonds (NSW); Kerry Baird, Norma Plummer, Beth Hancox (Vic); Christine Whittome (WA); Monica Pukallus, Kay
Ransley, Pat Mickan (SA).
Next year there'll be more keen international competi-tion. Selectors will choose another team to visit Trinidad
in August, to defend Austra-lia's World Championship title which Australia retained at the last World Tournament in Auckland, in 1975. ZO
- DIANA COUTTS I