The debutant ANL side was left euphoric from its historic seven-goal win on Saturday night over the Fury, inflicting just the reigning champions second loss since 2012.

But Magpies head coach Jon Fletcher still refused to accept that as an excuse.

“Like I’ve said, it was really going to be a start-all-over-again clean slate,” he said.

The home side headed to a 15-8 lead at quarter-time that the Tasmanians could never close at Melbourne’s State Netball and Hockey Centre.

“There’s probably a patch of seven or eight minutes of not our best netball, but we we probably started slowly all round,”  Fletcher said.

The Magpies trailed by 13 goals at one stage in the third quarter, but rallied home in the last to send a scare into the competition benchmark.

Launceston midcourter Shelby Miller was one of the bright spots for the side, backing up her performance in Saturday night’s victory.

Fletcher called the loss “pretty disappointing”, but still pointed to an upside.

“The real positive for the group is the way we came back,” he said.

“We fought pretty hard in the last quarter and won that by four or five goals.

“Whilst it was pretty disappointing, we also saw a lot of things come out there today.

“Different combinations gave us some good building blocks for the future.”

Fletcher was satisfied to split the road trip before heading next to Queensland.

“It was definitely a good measuring stick for us to know where we stand at the present moment,” he said.