Commonwealth Games Netball 2026 Highlights

For most of the semi-final, Jamaica simply refused to let Australia settle into the sort of rhythm we'd watched all tournament.

Then Australia did the very Australian thing of refusing to go away.

With less than a minute left, Jamaica's lead was being eaten away. Three quick goals brought the Diamonds back to within one and suddenly a game that had looked like Jamaica's was heading towards one of those finishes where you start wondering how Australia have managed to escape again.They had one final chance after the siren.

Sophie Dwyer took the shot that would have levelled the scores and forced extra time. It missed. Jamaica had won 46-45 and, for the first time in Commonwealth Games history, Australia would not contest the netball final.

It is worth saying this because sport has a habit of reducing an entire match to one final moment: Australia did not lose that semi-final because of one missed shot. There had been 60 minutes of netball before it. Jamaica had created the position they were in, and Dwyer's teammates were immediately around her afterwards.

Inside the Hydro, the reaction was huge. The near-capacity crowd included the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children, but by those final seconds it felt as though almost everybody had become an honorary Sunshine Girl.

This might actually be one of our favourite clips of the whole tournament.

The televised winning moment gives you the scale of the upset. This one gives you the people inside it.

The noise, the disbelief, the lap of honour, the sheer we've actually done it energy. Jamaica had reached another Commonwealth final, but this time they had got there by beating a Diamonds side that almost everyone had assumed would be playing for gold.

There is something particularly good about seeing those moments from right in amongst the team rather than from the other side of an arena.

There was something slightly 2019 World Cup about New Zealand's run in Glasgow.

While attention bounced between Australia's dominance, Jamaica's excitement and England playing in front of a home-nation crowd, the Silver Ferns just kept winning.

They were composed. Patient. Technically brilliant. They beat England 61-54 in the semi-final, with Grace Nweke scoring 52 of New Zealand's 61 goals, then led Jamaica from the opening stages of the final.

The final finished 56-48, giving New Zealand their third Commonwealth Games netball title and their first gold since Delhi 2010.

No huge controversy. No frantic comeback required. Just a team that seemed very clear about exactly how it wanted to play, and stuck to the game plan.

After the medals had been presented, the Silver Ferns performed a haka on court.

Jamaica and Australia remained nearby watching, and for a couple of minutes the result became secondary. It was an incredibly powerful end to the tournament and the clip quickly travelled well beyond the usual netball accounts online.

Gold had taken 16 years to get back around New Zealand necks. They were going to mark it properly.

If you like the nerdier side of netball, this is the one.

The final was a really good example of why looking at a scoreline tells you very little about what is actually happening tactically.

Grace Nweke's positioning was particularly clever. Jamaica possess some of the most dangerous aerial defenders in world netball, so New Zealand repeatedly worked to take that strength away from them. Rather than giving defenders opportunities to fly across and attack high ball, Nweke created space close to post while the Silver Ferns' midcourt worked defenders away from the feed.

The result was a steady stream of much cleaner ball into the circle.

At the other end, New Zealand had another problem to solve. Jamaica are at their best when the game starts moving quickly and becomes free-flowing. The Silver Ferns did everything they could to stop that happening.

They changed defensive pictures, dropped into zones and box structures, shut down easy forward options and applied relentless hands-over pressure. Jamaica were increasingly forced to reset rather than simply release the ball and run.

None of it looked particularly dramatic in isolation. Over 60 minutes, it was suffocating.

And that is probably one of the biggest reasons New Zealand's tournament deserves more attention than simply Grace Nweke scored lots of goals. This was exceptionally good unit netball.

England against Australia was physical pretty much from the outset.

Sarah Klau and Eleanor Cardwell spent a sizeable chunk of the game battling for the same patches of circle, and Cardwell ended up on the deck more than once. Australia eventually won 66-47 in a match Diamonds shooter Sophie Garbin herself described afterwards as extremely physical.

Look at individual clips in isolation and it's very easy to declare that somebody was pushed, somebody held and somebody definitely got away with something.

Slow everything down and everybody becomes an umpire.

The more interesting part was how differently people viewed the same contests. Some saw brilliant defensive pressure. Others thought too much was being allowed. And plenty were mainly wondering how Cardwell kept getting back up.

This one had the Hydro making its feelings known.

Cardwell is trying to slow Jamie-Lee Price's run into the centre third for a centre pass. Price keeps moving, Cardwell goes down and the crowd reacts immediately.

Price is hardly an unknown quantity when it comes to physical midcourt netball. Her game is built around speed, power and contest, which is precisely why she is so difficult to play against.

The clip became another perfect example of the problem with judging an entire contest through a few seconds of replay. Was it excessive contact? Was one player holding position while another tried to move through? What had happened immediately before the bit we can see?

Fans came to very different conclusions. The umpires still had to make theirs in real time.

There aren't many truly peaceful ways to describe two international netballers both deciding that the same ball is theirs.

Courtney Bruce and South African shooter Elmeré van der Berg got themselves into exactly that situation, with both players fighting for possession before the decision went against Bruce.

Her reaction suggests she may have had a slightly different interpretation.

Bruce has spent years playing an intensely physical defensive style at the highest level, including plenty of similarly hard contests in SSN. It is part of what makes these international match-ups so interesting. Players arrive accustomed to different opponents, different domestic competitions and slightly different interpretations of where the limit sits.

Sometimes everyone agrees.

This was not one of those times.

This is probably the clip from this section that needs the least embellishment.

Welsh shooter Georgia Rowe and Jamaican defender Kadie-Ann Dehaney were already involved in a seriously committed physical contest. There was bumping, pushing for position and plenty happening away from the ball.

After one decision went Jamaica's way, the clip appears to show Rowe extending a leg into Dehaney's path as the defender moved past. Dehaney reacted immediately, the pair came face to face and the umpire stepped in. Wales made a change shortly afterwards. Reports at the time also picked up the incident as one of the more heated moments of the match.

It's an uncomfortable clip, but that doesn't mean either player needs to become the villain of the tournament because of it.

International netball is emotional. It is physical. Players are competing under enormous pressure and occasionally moments boil over.

The useful conversation is where the line should sit and how consistently it is applied, rather than deciding somebody's entire character from ten seconds of a netball match.

There were two very different conversations happening at once.

One was straightforward: Does this kit actually fit these athletes properly?

If players repeatedly need to adjust clothing while competing, it seems reasonable for supporters to wonder whether the design is doing its job.

The second was more complicated: Why are we spending so much time talking about what female athletes are wearing when they are producing world-class sport?

That criticism is fair too.

But there is another reason the conversation matters. Research around women and girls in sport has repeatedly found that body image and sports uniform concerns can become barriers to participation, particularly during adolescence. For some girls, having more choice about what they wear genuinely can make sport feel more accessible.

So this wasn't really a choice between 'talk about the dresses' and 'talk about the netball'.

There was room for a sensible conversation about both.

What probably mattered most was how the players themselves felt. Sophie Garbin made it clear that the Diamonds were proud of their kit and did not believe it was affecting their performance.

And then she dealt with the whole thing in possibly the most appropriate way available.

When your team kit has become one of the most discussed things at an international multi-sport event, there are two options.

You can ignore the internet.

Or you can make a video about it yourself.

Garbin chose option two.

Her tongue-in-cheek response turned the dress into the star of its own little social media moment and, unsurprisingly, that went viral too.

Probably a healthier conclusion to Dressgate than another 4,000 comments debating hem length.

Netball already had previous in this department.

NSW Swifts fans had fallen in love with their own Mopman, volunteer Patrick O'Malveney, whose courtside dancing had become part of the entertainment at SSN games.

Glasgow then accidentally found itself another one.

CJ Miller, a 25-year-old professional dancer from Livingston, was hired as part of the Games entertainment operation. Give a professional dancer a mop, a packed arena and Queen's 'I Want to Break Free' and apparently this is what happens.

His routines at the Hydro went viral far beyond netball, with Miller becoming one of the unexpected personalities of the entire Commonwealth Games.

Elite sport is serious business.

It is also completely acceptable to briefly lose your mind because the court wiper has done the splits.

If you watch SSN religiously, Uneeq Palavi was hardly a new discovery.

If you don't, Glasgow may have been your introduction.

The Tongan shooter had already won plenty of fans in Australia through her netball and, perhaps even more noticeably, the sheer amount of personality she brings with her. Glasgow gave a much wider international audience the same experience.

Tonga were making their Commonwealth Games netball debut, and Palavi seemed determined to enjoy absolutely all of it.

Interviews became events in their own right. Journalists clearly enjoyed having her in front of a microphone. Her pride in Tonga was impossible to miss and her energy landed particularly well during a tournament containing plenty of very polished sports interviews.

For UK fans, there is an extra bit of good news.

Just over a week after the Games, London Mavericks announced Palavi for the 2027 Netball Super League season.

So apparently Glasgow was only the beginning of the British Uneeq Palavi experience.

We're fine with that.

There were spectacular intercepts, one-goal thrillers and viral personalities all over Glasgow.

But if you care about where netball goes next, this clip deserves just as much attention.

Look at those stands.

Around 100,000 people attended the netball across Glasgow 2026, making it the most-attended sport at the Games. Organisers sold 434,000 tickets across the entire Commonwealth Games, meaning netball accounted for close to a quarter of that ticketed audience.

For a women's sport still fighting for greater mainstream coverage, commercial investment and funding, that matters.

A lot.

It also wasn't simply the medal contenders generating the atmosphere.