English defender Mkoloma in Swifts line-up

England netball star Sonia Mkoloma will line-up alongside a number of Australia's top players this weekend, little more than a week after banging bodies with some of them in the recent Test series.

Defender Mkoloma will play her first games for the NSW Swifts in a seven-team pre-season Netball Cup competition over three days at the Sydney Olympic Park Sports Centre starting on Friday.

The official pre-season competition brings together all five Australian franchises, the Swifts, Adelaide Thunderbirds, Melbourne Vixens, West Coast Fever and Queensland Firebirds, plus New Zealand teams Southern Steel and Central Pulse.

Mkoloma, 30, was part of the England team which suffered a narrow 2-1 series loss to Australia at home last week.

The veteran defender, who has spent the first two seasons of the ANZ Championship with New Zealand franchises Central Pulse (2008) and Canterbury Tactix (2009), will play on a Swifts side containing Australian stars Kimberlee Green, Rebecca Bulley and Susan Pratley, who she lined up against in the recent Test series.

"It's weird, because I've been playing against her (Pratley) for years ... it will be better playing alongside her, which will be great, she can give someone else problems," Mkoloma joked.

However, she will have to wait to play alongside another Diamond, Swifts captain Catherine Cox, who will miss the Cup because of her rehabilitation from off-season surgery.

She will have just a couple of training sessions alongside her new teammates before plunging into the hectic Cup competition.

The seven teams play each other in a round robin format in matches of four ten-minute quarters.

"I got here on Tuesday morning and had a little run with the girls, I nearly fell asleep halfway through," Mkoloma said.

"We trained on Wednesday night and I felt much better.

"Today was a kind of day off and I went to the pool and had a stretch and I'm feeling so much better."

Her integration into the Swifts should be made easier by the presence of coach Julie Fitzgerald, who coached her last year for a composite world team, which played Tests against the Silver Ferns in New Zealand.

Mkoloma was looking forward to "a bit of sunshine" after a couple of years in New Zealand and stressed sampling the Australian style of netball with a major factor in the decision to cross the Tasman.

"It was definitely the opportunity to come and play the Australian style," she said.

"I've been to New Zealand twice, so it's something different."

With Jamaica beating both Australia and New Zealand late last year and England also defeating the Diamonds, Mkoloma said the Commonwealth Games tournament in New Delhi in October would be very exciting.

- AAP