A youthful NSW Swifts team extended their recent winning run over West Coast Fever, with an opening round 55-41 trans-Tasman netball victory at Sydney Olympic Park Sports Centre on Monday night.
Fever scored the first goal, but that was their only lead, as the Swifts piled on the next eight.
NSW led by 11 at quarter and half-time and by 15 at the final change.
It was the seventh straight victory the Swifts had notched over Fever.
West Coast's cause wasn't helped by a second quarter ankle injury to experienced wing defence Andrea Gilmore, which forced Fever coach Norman Plummer to rejig her midcourt.
Plummer started with her established shooters Catherine Cox (29/36) and Caitlin Bassett (3/5).
However, she benched Bassett after the first quarter and brought on new recruit Kate Beveridge (7/13) but replaced her with Lisa Millman (2/2) for the final quarter.
Swifts coach Lisa Beehag opted to start with 20-year-old Paige Hadley at centre and also included 22-year-old goalkeeper April Letton in her first seven, both of whom had made less than 10 senior appearances.
The Swifts shot at 85 per cent to the Fever's 73, with Susan Pratley (32/38), Carla Dziwoki (18/21) and Amorette Wild (5/6) all proving reliable.
Beehag was happy with her team's first-up performance and the efforts of her youngsters and said competition at training over the past week had made it difficult to select the starting seven.
Plummer was disappointed with the performances of Bassett and Beveridge and said Gilmore would most likely miss two matches with her ankle injury.
Cox said the Fever needed to be more physical and competitive from the start.
"We made a lot of changes, but I think the second half of the game was the best part of the game with all those changes," Cox said.
"I'm very encouraged by what I saw."
Meantime, Sharelle McMahon's long-awaited return to netball was marked in style by the Melbourne Vixens with a 60-46 defeat of the Northern Mystics in Auckland.
The highly-impressive Vixens led 27-24 at halftime but they rocketed clear after the break when Australian netballer McMahon was introduced to the game at goal attack.
It was the 35-year-old's first game of netball in almost two years.
She spent nearly a year recovering from a ruptured achilles tendon and missed the 2012 season with pregnancy.
"I think I was running out of a little bit of steam at the end there," McMahon said.
"It was just great to get back out there and start the season with such an emphatic win in the end."
She said it felt "strange" marking long-time Vixens defender Julie Corletto, who has crossed the Tasman this year.
McMahon shot a solid 10 from 14 after replacing the impressive Tegan Caldwell although both played second fiddle to goal shoot Karyn Howarth, who landed 38 from 45.AAP
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