The Melbourne Vixens have crashed to their second trans-Tasman netball defeat in seven days, losing 49-45 to the Northern Mystics in a quality encounter.
The Vixens opened the season with six wins, but they came unstuck on Sunday in what was a rare win on Australian soil for a New Zealand team.
While other New Zealand sides have gone close this year, the win for the third-placed Mystics is the first for a New Zealand based team in Australia.
The Mystics controlled the game from the opening centre pass and were rarely headed all game.
They were lead brilliantly by their captain Temepara George who was creative from wing attack and fed the ball into shooters Maria Tutaia and Catherine Latu.
The accuracy of the Mystics duo was central to their victory. Latu missed just one of her 24 attempts, while Tutaia shot 26 goals for 34 attempts.
The Mystics led by eight goals early in the final term and were forced to fight off the inevitable Vixens comeback, but the New Zealand side defended strongly.
Veteran defender Anna Harrison stunned the Vixens goal shooters and the crowd with three amazing rejections during the game, a rare event in netball, as she used her height to place added pressure on the opposition.
The Vixens have hit a difficult patch after their super start to the season, and things will get no easier next week when they play the NSW Swifts - who inflicted their first defeat of the season last Sunday.
