Tall Ferns team huddle during the FIBA Women's Asia Cup. Photo: photosport
Old rivals will open a new era with basketball's inaugural Trans-Tasman Throwdown.
Over five days in May the Tall Ferns and Tall Blacks would play Australia's Opals and Boomers over three double header games split between Australia and New Zealand.
The new initiative got New Zealand's top women's players back on a home court for an international game for the first time in more than five years.
The last time the Tall Ferns played in New Zealand, November 2019, they won their Olympic qualifier against South Korea in Auckland, but failed to progress to the Tokyo Olympics.
Since then the Tall Ferns had played more than 20 times - including twice against the Opals - with games hosted in countries like Jordan, Australia, Turkey and Serbia.
In their last meeting with the Opals in the 2023 FIBA Women's Asia Cup in Sydney, the Tall Ferns lost the bronze medal game.
The Opals are Olympic bronze medalists and are currently ranked world number two so it would be a tough match-up for the 26th ranked Tall Ferns who were still without a permanent coach.
Australian Natalie Hurst filled the coaching role on an interim basis after Guy Molloy stood down in March last year.
The Opals last played in New Zealand in 2015 and it had also been nearly a decade since the Boomers were in Aotearoa.
Taine Murray playing for the Tall Blacks the last time they played Australia in 2021. Photo: Photosport
The Tall Blacks and Boomers last played in 2021 in an Asia Cup Qualifier in Cairns, with a New Zealand roster without any New Zealand-based players due to quarantine restrictions during the pandemic.
The Boomers had a winning record over the Tall Blacks, including the last time they played which they won 81-52 in Tall Black legend Mika Vukona's last game.
In February 2020, the Tall Blacks ended an 11-year losing streak against their trans-Tasman rivals with a 109-98 win in the opening game at the Asia 2021 qualifiers.
Basketball New Zealand chief executive Dillon Boucher said the "the rivalry between our two countries is unmatched" and he was looking forward to hosting Australia again.
Boucher's Basketball Australia counterpart Matt Scriven wanted the series to mark the return to clashes between the two countries.
"The arrival of the Trans-Tasman Throwdown series is a testament to the rise of the game in both Australia and New Zealand. There's a strong history of basketball in both regions and like Australia, Aotearoa is currently driving and enjoying a boom of their own.
"We want the inaugural series to set the foundation for a tradition that fans, players and teams will embrace, and we look forward to introducing a new era of rivalry between Australia and New Zealand basketball."
The series starts in Adelaide on 7 May before heading northeast to the Sunshine Coast on 9 May culminating in the final game in Hamilton on 11 May.
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