BEING JANINE
A relaxed coach under pressure
For a coach under pressure, Janine Southby is disarmingly relaxed.
Perched on the edge of the couch in the hotel room of Silver Ferns manager Esther Molloy, whose room becomes the nerve centre of team operations when in camp, a jandal-clad Southby is laying out the next six weeks for the beleaguered team as if she were rattling off items on a shopping list.
She is at the midway point in the first of three build-up camps for the Commonwealth Games. The next is in Dunedin next week, before the Ferns assemble in Auckland on March 17. The team then plays the Taini Jamison series – a four-day tournament against Jamaica, Malawi and Fiji – their last opportunity for match play before the Gold Coast event.
Over that time she must lift a Ferns team at its lowest ebb in what has been a fairly ordinary few years for the national programme. Ferns management not only need to find a way to bridge the gulf in class between the world No 1 Australian side, but also rediscover their edge over England, who have beaten the New Zealand side in three of their last five meetings.
‘‘There’s a lot to get through,’’ Southby says with a wry smile.
What is left unspoken is these next six weeks will determine her future in the job.
Failure to make the final in the Gold Coast will almost certainly mean the end of Southby’s tenure as national coach.
After backing up a disastrous Constellation Cup series with a calamitous third placing behind Australia and England in the curiously named Northern Quad Series tour, which saw fixtures split between London and Cape Town, there is a sense that Southby is walking the green mile.
It would be easy to feel sorry for Southby. Her reign as Silver Ferns coach coincided with a raft of highprofile retirements, exacerbating New Zealand’s oft-bemoaned depth issue. Laura Langman’s unavailability last season – a result of a policy decision left out of Southby’s hands – further compounded matters.
There’s a strong feeling, too, that Netball NZ did Southby no favours by throwing her into the job too early after a poorly-handled appointment process. The national body left two more experienced and successful coaches – Noeline Taurua and Julie Fitzgerald – on the bench for reasons unrelated to their performance, and Southby has, at times, borne the brunt of that decision.
But Southby has little time for excuses. Self-responsibility is one of the three key pillars the Ferns are focusing on in their build-up camps and it is a message she and assistant coach Yvette Mccausland-durie are taking on board as well.
‘‘We’re not hiding from where we are at and the work that needs to be done. We need to look at everything, and that includes Yvette and myself.’’
If the toughest work is to be done on the training court, the team room at the Brentwood Hotel, just down from Wellington’s ASB Centre, comes a close second.
Behind the varnished doors of the conference centre’s Rimu Room, the Ferns have been forced to have some difficult conversations about what values they stand for as a team, how they hope to be perceived as a team and as individual players, and how they relate to one another in the group.
Many of those conversations have been driven by former AFL star turned performance guru Trent Hotton, who has been brought in to address the team’s culture.
A self-described ‘‘dickhead’’ during his own professional sports career, Hotton has worked as a consultant with some of the Australasia’s most successful clubs, and is now helping the Ferns shape their team values and culture.
Southby says one of the big focuses for the ‘‘notoriously quiet’’ group is how they communicate with one another on and off court.
‘‘He’s doing some work with us around how we will build our connections and accountability within the group,’’ she says.
Southby doesn’t want to give too much away about the discussions that have been had as a group, but by way of example she brings up an incident in training the previous day. During a training drill, a pass from the midcourt into the shooting circle failed to connect, and the ball sailed over the baseline. Both players raised their hand at one another and nodded a ‘‘sorry’’, before play continued.
‘‘I pulled them back up and said ‘hang on, who is going to take responsibility for that? What happened there?’ If they both just apologise and nothing more is said, that does not address the problem.’’
It’s a classic Kiwi trait – the automatic apology regardless of fault, or even contextual relevance. But in a high-performance environment, apologies mean little if it doesn’t come with an explanation or a resolution.
The Silver Ferns management is trying to foster an environment of accountability and action – a task made all the more difficult in a largely young team. Many of the players have been elevated quickly through the ranks, and are yet to find their voice in the group.
Sam Sinclair is perhaps an exception. The livewire midcourter is one of the newest members of the group, but she is also one of the toughest talkers.
‘‘I think sometimes we are too quiet and too nice to one another. When things aren’t going to plan we need to know we can call one another up on it, without it affecting team morale.
‘‘It’s about being open and honest with one another. That’s the only way we can improve,’’ says Sinclair, who has just completed a workshop evaluating the communication styles of each member of the team.
Prior to that session, the players were looking at another aspect of their communication – how they relate to the umpires and officials. The Ferns’ on-court behaviour, and in particular dealings with umpires, was identified as a key area letting them down in a review of the 2016 season.
It’s not just the perception that the Ferns are, to put it bluntly, ‘‘whingers’’ that is hardly conducive to making umpires see things from their point of view, but as their mental skills coach Renzie Hanham says, ‘‘where your mind goes, your energy follows’’.
For the past eight months the team has been working with Garratt Williamson, a former rugby referee who now heads Netball NZ’S national technical officials, to improve their ‘‘umpire relations’’.
‘‘We’re really conscious that we need to build good relationships with the officials and that’s not something I think we’d done particularly well at any level of the game. When you see dissent out there on court it’s not good to watch, in fact it is hugely frustrating,’’ Southby says.
‘‘There were instances where we were being quite disrespectful and that’s not what a Silver Fern is, and that’s something we’re working really hard to change.
‘‘You can’t control what an umpire is going to do, but you can control the way you react to that stuff and you waste time in feeling sorry for yourself. You can’t just go into victim mode.’’
It is Southby’s intention to continue this ‘‘piece of work’’ after the Commonwealth Games, but whether she will get the opportunity will depend on what plays out on the Gold Coast over 10 days in April.
What is playing out at the Ferns main on-court training session at Wellington’s ASB Sports Centre is being closely watched by Netball NZ executives. Chief executive Jennie Wyllie and her board stopped by the courts to watch the team train, with the Ferns training camp coinciding with a big weekend of netball festivities in Wellington.
Southby addresses the board before training, letting them know what the team is working on and what to look out for.
The training session is all about ball placement on attack, or as Southby puts it – ‘‘making sure we are placing the ball in such a way that it adds value to our attack’’, which seems to be a positive way of framing ‘‘not giving the ball to the opposition’’.
With the Silver Ferns getting by on minimal support staff, multitasking is a must for those in sideline roles. Today, high performance manager Keir Hansen has been charged with video-taping the session. He dutifully stands on a chair behind play recording the action. After every block of drills the attacking players crowd around the ipad breaking down the play and looking at where they can sharpen up on the next block.
There are a few grimaces from midcourter Grace Kara as she reviews the footage showing a mistimed drive upsetting the rhythm on attack.
Southby leads the discussion. She sometimes prefers to hear what players have to say first, to see if they can recognise where things are breaking down, but today she wants to see how the players can respond to the feedback and make immediate adjustments.
Missing from the discussion is one of the Ferns attacking linchpins, Maria Folau. The New Zealand vice-captain, who has been hampered by a string of foot injuries over the past few seasons, once again finds herself on the ‘‘managed workload’’ list after picking up a minor knee injury on the opening day of the camp. Rookie defender Michaela Sokolich-beatson, the only uncapped member of the Commonwealth Games team, and Kayla Cullen are also being closely monitored by the medical staff, but both are able to play a role in the court session.
Folau, meanwhile, shuffles off to an adjacent court for a (seated) boxing session with lead strength and conditioner Stephen Hotter. In between sets, she glances forlornly over her shoulder at her teammates zipping around the court.
Folau is also looking over her shoulder in a metaphorical sense, too, as she faces competition from the likes of Bailey Mes, Te Paea Selby-rickit and the returning Ameliaranne Ekenasio for the starting spots in the shooting circle. All four shooters can cover both positions, leaving Ferns management with some interesting discussions to be had around which combinations to use against which opposition.
It took a while for Selby-rickit to see herself as a genuine starting option for the national team. Back at the team hotel, during a rare break in the Ferns schedule, Selbyrickit sits down to talk about her breakthrough 18 months in the national set-up.
‘‘I think the big turning point for me was the game in Launceston last year in the Constellation Cup when beat Australia in that really tight game. For me, knowing I could play a full game against Australian defenders was a big confidence boost,’’ says Selby-rickit as she absentmindedly runs her thumb over a scar at the top of her knee – a visible reminder of an accident last year in which the Southern Steel’s team van flipped and skidded along the road.
Selby-rickit still has tar embedded under her skin from the accident. She also broke two ribs – one in two places – and reckons she was only just properly regaining her fitness towards the end of last season. Which is why the adversity the Ferns are facing now seems entirely surmountable for the shooter, who is one of six players in the 12-strong team who will be playing in their first major tournament at senior level at the Commonwealth Games.
For Southby, it will also be her first pinnacle event as national coach. She is determined it won’t be her last. ‘‘Am I nervous about it? Absolutely. But now that we’re here in camp it’s good to be here, because when you’re away you can only do so much. You can do a whole lot of planning, but until you do the work that’s when you feel like you’re actually in control.’’
‘‘It’s about being open and honest with one another. That’s the only way we can improve.’’
Midcourter Sam Sinclair