Grant thrilled with changes implemented by Taurua
AUCKLAND: Silver Ferns vicecaptain Katrina Grant is singing the praises of the changes made by new coach Noeline Taurua as the Ferns try to fight their way back to the top of international netball.
In doing so, though, she may have further revealed just how wayward the Ferns had become under Janine Southby’s leadership.
‘‘It’s been great,’’ Grant said of the start of the Taurua tenure. ‘‘I’ve loved every minute of it. ‘‘Noels has brought in a whole lot of different ideas and I think you can see that every game we played in the Quad Series, we got better.’’
She is right. After a record loss to England to kick off the Quad Series, the Ferns smashed South Africa and had a somewhat respectable 6055 defeat to Australia.
So what bright ideas has Taurua implemented to kickstart the turnaround?
Well, that is where things get interesting. When asked about the key differences between Southby’s tenure and the start of Taurua’s reign, Grant reels off ‘‘very simple’’ changes — things you would have assumed to be already in place in an international netball environment.
‘‘Understanding what our role is — what we’re going into training and doing, what we’re working on, and having meetings and game plans on what exactly we need to work on to go forward,’’ Grant told Radio Sport.
Read between the lines, and the inference is that such simple measures were an issue under Southby’s reign.
Grant described the new environment with such vigour that you get an underlying sense of how bad things may have been before.
Much of that was played out in Netball New Zealand’s review into the Ferns’ Commonwealth Games performance, which found Southby’s playerled culture had caused a disconnect, with the young squad needing a more handson coaching approach during training sessions.
That is where the biggest changes have been made, according to Grant.
‘‘I really enjoy trainings. They’re different, they’re intense. We’re training to play to win. So if we’re not hard on each other at training, then you’re not going to survive in the international arena these days.
‘‘[Taurua] asks a lot of us — to be brutal on each other in terms of wanting to make each other better and want to win. The intensity has risen in every training, and players want more from each other. That’s something we didn’t really have as much of in the past.’’ Despite optimism, there is still a need for patience as the Ferns work their way back.
Australia is still a strong favourite in the Constellation Cup next month, despite being set to trial some young combinations, and Grant is preaching caution.
‘‘It needs to start from scratch with new players and new management coming through. It’s not going to happen overnight.
‘‘Every day [in the Quad Series], we took a step forward, and going into the Constellation Cup, now’s the time we have to pick up a win.’’
That is hardly a lofty goal compared with the heights of yesteryear, but considering how low the Silver Ferns have sunk, it is a realistic marker for a team on the rise.