Saturday, 3 May 2025:
The Adelaide Thunderbirds' pursuit of a Super Netball title three-peat is on shaky ground after losing Shamera Sterling-Humphrey for the season and suffering a 64-63 loss to the Giants at Ken Rosewall Arena.
For the Giants, the reigning wooden spooners, Saturday's result was their first win of the season, the boilover secured by a fast start and tense finish to narrowly ward off the back-to-back champion Thunderbirds.
Adelaide were rocked on the eve of the match with the bombshell announcement import goal keeper Shamera Sterling-Humphrey, the world's best defender, will miss the rest of the season due to pregnancy and has returned home to Jamaica.
The loss of Sterling-Humphrey, one of the competition's elite players for the past six years and the first three games of this season, looms as a fatal blow for the Thunderbirds.
Giants co-captain Jo Harten thrived in the absence of her long-time rival, burying 33 goals, including 11 in the fourth quarter against Sterling-Humphrey's replacement, rising South African Sanmarie Visser.
"It means everything," an elated Harten said, just four weeks after giving birth to her daughter Eddie.
"We don't play this sport to lose games and we don't play this sport to have a poor start to our season.
"Get our first win under our belt, it feels great."
The Giants were never headed but they were sternly challenged late, their eight-goal second-quarter lead scaled right back in the final period.
With the margin three points, Adelaide's long-range specialist Lauren Frew's seventh super shot trimmed the deficit back to a single point with 26 seconds remaining, before the Giants were able to play keepings off until the fulltime horn.
The T'birds defence coughed up five early turnovers and struggled to contain Harten and Sophie Dwyer, who shot at 100 per cent in the first term as the Giants held sway 21-16.
Latanya Wilson did her best to lift the visitors in the second stanza, as did Georgie Horjus in the third, but Adelaide were unable to make any further inroads until their brave but forlorn fourth-quarter fightback.
