Australia are into the semi-finals of the Women's Water Polo World Cup after beating Italy 15-14 at Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre.
The Stingers next play USA in the last four on Friday evening, in the same pool Australia beat the USA to gold at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.
In a high-quality quarter-final on Wednesday evening between the world No.6 Australia and world No.7 Italy, goalkeeper Gabi Palm was named player of the match after stopping a late Italian surge.
Tilly Kearns led the scoring for the Stingers with four goals in an impressive performance of her own, while Dafne Bettini scored four for Italy.
Charlize Andrews, Sienna Hearn, Alice Williams and Abby Andrews each scored two goals for Australia.
Palm was quick to praise the teammates in front of her for helping her performance, as well as captain Bronte Halligan, who played her 200th game for Australia.
"She's our leader in and out of the pool. An honour to play alongside her and to get the win for her, in her honour, is extra special," Palm said of Halligan.
"We dug in there, we fought hard. The Italians were coming at us and we just didn't let them.
"Having a home crowd was just amazing and it just feels so good to get the win."
Australia's shot efficiency was at 55 per cent to Italy's 38 and Australia capitalised on extra player opportunities, converting on 8/10 extra player shots, opposed to Italy's 5/14.
Kearns said the clash with Italy sets them up well for their next challenge.
“That was everything that we were hoping for and that we were expecting," she said.
“We would’ve probably preferred for it to be a little bit more of a comfortable game but you can never expect that against Italy. So to get away in such an exciting, close game is so amazing."
In the other women's quarter-finals on Wednesday, USA beat China 14-8, Russia beat Netherlands 11-6 and Spain beat Hungary 8-7.
In the Men's Water Polo World Cup which is also being played at the same venue in Sydney, Australia play Spain on Thursday evening.
