West Coast Fever have kept a cool head to cut down the Giants 84-65 in Super Netball's season opener.
The home crowd at Sydney's Ken Rosewall Arena on Saturday kept the pressure on against a Fever side that won both clashes between the teams last season, and only missed out on the grand final by a single goal.
The visitors began to dominate as the first quarter progressed, the lacklustre Giants defence spitting up the ball time after time to deadly Fever goal shooter Jhaniele Fowler-Nembhard.
The Jamaican superstar finished with 70 of her team's 84 goals in a dominant performance.
West Coast coach Dan Ryan said the "clinical" approach was a result of strong work in pre-season and a team-wide commitment to performance.
"I thought everyone played their role, the changes were seamless," he said.
They may have been trailing on the scoreboard, but a backwards step goal from Jo Harten in the second quarter showed off the partnership between the Giants captain and dynamic goal attack Sophie Dwyer.
A fluid West Coast attack provided plenty of ammunition to set up a 45-34 halftime score.
Despite the Fever making much less use of the Super Shot - they scored four goals from nine attempts compared to the Giants' 14 from 23 - they still managed to come out nearly 20 goals on top.
Trailing 67-50 at the final change, the Giants fought hard in a fourth quarter that ended 17-15 in the Fever's favour.
"At the moment, I'm struggling to find too much that I'm happy with," the Giants' four-time premiership coach Julie Fitzgerald said.
"I think we were a little bit shell-shocked to begin with in the first half of that match. We certainly didn't play the way we've been training.
"Everyone's got to step up."
A post-match huddle came to a close with Harten telling her team they needed to take responsibility for the result.
"It wasn't good enough," she said.
"But I don't want us to hang our heads on around one loss. There's so many more games to play, and there's so many more quarters to be won."
