Even as Tracey Neville confirmed that her team’s bronze-medal win against South Africa was her last game in charge she immediately admitted this World Cup had left her with unfinished business. “I’ve been part of this system for 20 years and I want to be part of it again,” the England coach said.

What capacity that might be in no one knows, although she hopes it will be as part of a wider professionalisation of the sport in the UK. “At the moment we only have about 25 professional athletes in England and we want to double that in the next four to eight years,” said Neville. “That’s probably when there’s a role back here for me.”

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Her coaching successor is yet to be confirmed – neither Neville, nor her players, have any hint who it might be.

Vast strides have already been made in English netball (it is 10 years since one of its principal sponsors was Pukka Pies). The TV coverage provided by Sky – and, crucially, shared with the BBC to raise the sport’s profile – has been excellent. The enthusiasm for this World Cup has been uplifting to witness, not to mention the engagement outside the arena.

King’s Dock has been covered in pop-up training areas where girls and boys practise their ball skills alongside each other; impromptu games have taken place outside the box office. A combination of afternoon sunshine, big screen action and kid-friendly activities have kept the Chevasse Park fanzone bustling with bodies. Add to that the regular sight around town of rangy women in team tracksuits clutching their morning cups of coffee – or buying supermarket snacks with strapping round their ankles – and there is no denying that Liverpool has become Netball City.

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But for all the happy feels, Sunday morning still began with a large swath of brunching England fans, roses in their hair, ordering bloody marys as a salve for crushing disappointment. This tournament has shown just how far the sport in England has to go to close the gap on its antipodean tormentors.

England’s fighting spirit has never been in doubt this week. Their tactics, consistency and bench strength are another matter. They peaked against South Africa in their final group game, where their emotions ran so visibly high one wondered how they would keep a lid on them in the knockouts.

One moment in their semi-final summed up their efforts in a single play. The score was 31-31 when Helen Housby sent a long, wild pass that missed its intended recipient, Serena Guthrie, by metres. The England captain – a woman who dies as hard as Bruce Willis – made a kamikaze leap to knock the ball back into play. It landed in the hands of her opposite number, Laura Langman, and New Zealand – who went on to win the World Cup – scored the next four goals of the game.

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They had been building towards this first World Cup win for four years, having beaten the world-best Australia at the Commonwealth Games. So what went wrong? Yes, the Silver Ferns who dumped them out of the competition were highly experienced – but England boasted 72 more caps. Yes, Housby and Joanne Harten’s threat was curtailed by a zonal defence different from the one‑on‑one marking they had faced from every other opposition. But everyone knew that was how Noeline Taurua’s women would play and England had no answer.

When Layla Guscoth was injured on only the second day, Neville denied it would hinder her team. Of course she did: she was now managing the only 11-woman squad in the tournament. Her players did not want to hear – and no one needed to be told – that they had just lost their best defender. But Geva Mentor’s and Eboni Usoro-Brown’s inability to shut down the New Zealand shooters, and England’s lack of a plan B, were so evident that even Neville finally admitted that Guscoth would have “added value”.

So England lost their eighth semi-final and their 14th of 15 World Cup encounters with New Zealand. They have still never won a World Cup game against Australia, who continue to dominate the world game thanks to Suncorp Super Netball, the professional domestic league even New Zealand envies. Almost all of England’s best players – Housby, Harten, Guthrie, Mentor, Chelsea Pitman, Natalie Haythornthwaite – have honed their skills there. England’s Vitality Superleague – significant as it is to the development of the sport in the UK – does not compare.

Sara Symington, the director of performance, has said that England netball are “already clear about what the next four years is going to look like”. And after the game Neville promised that a “highly talented group of Roses” were on their way through the ranks to take the places of her veteran charges – many of whom will take a break from the international scene while considering their future.

But Neville knows what the future really needs to look like. “I would like to see the franchises moving to professionalising the sport. And I would like to see 90% of the athletes in professional franchises.”