Helen Housby scored a last-second goal to clinch the title for England back in 2018

Team England will open their Commonwealth Games title defence on July 29, 2022 and be first on court at the NEC Arena in Birmingham.

The Vitality Roses, who won gold in dramatic fashion on the Gold Coast in 2018, will face an action-packed schedule as they bid to win back-to-back titles for the first time in their history.

The Roses’ first match will be against one of the outfits yet to qualify for the competition. Then, they will take on the Malawi Queens on July 30, before partaking in successive contests on August 1 and 2.

The outfit’s final group match will be a showdown against the reigning world champions, New Zealand on August 4.

England, Aus and NZ qualify for Commonwealth Games

England, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, South Africa, and Malawi are the first six teams to qualify for the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

Currently six teams have qualified for the 2022 competition due to their World Netball World Rankings; England, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, South Africa, and Malawi are all confirmed.

World Netball has extended the qualifying period for the other six places to January 21, 2022.

Once the deadline passes, the Commonwealth Games Associations that are ranked seventh to 12th in the World Netball World Rankings will also secure qualification into the competition.

The other matches currently confirmed in the 2022 Commonwealth Games schedule include Jamaica against South Africa during the evening session on 30 July.

Australia’s duel with South Africa will be during the morning session on August 1, and New Zealand against Malawi will take place that evening.

The Australian Diamonds will also face Jamaica in the morning session on August 4 and that will be part of the first of three netball sessions held that day.