West Coast Fever coach Stacey Marinkovich has been named as the new coach of Australia's national netball team, the Diamonds.
She succeeds Lisa Alexander, who was in charge of the national side for nearly a decade until earlier this year.
Marinkovich, who was previously the Australian Fast 5 head coach, will continue to coach the Fever in the Super Netball competition but will take over immediately as national coach.
She will remain at the Fever until the end of the 2021 season, at which point she will become the full-time coach of the Diamonds in the lead-up to the 2022 Commonwealth games in Birmingham and the 2023 Netball World Cup in South Africa.
"This is something I have been working towards my entire professional life and I'm absolutely honoured and humbled that Netball Australia have granted me the opportunity to lead the world's best netball team," Marinkovich said in a statement from the Diamonds.
"I am acutely aware of the expectations, the history and responsibility of taking on such a position and I am very much looking forward to growing the success of the Diamonds program.
"Coaching the Diamonds is not about me as a coach. It is about the team that is representing the nation and Netball Australia, and everything I will do in my time as head coach is about the quality of that representation."
Marinkovich, who becomes the 15th coach of the Diamonds in the team's history, received the Joyce Brown Coach of the Year award in 2018.
More to come.
