Netball NZ open to fresh ideas
NETBALL New Zealand is keeping a ‘‘really open mind’’ as it plots a course forward for the Silver Ferns, after an international season which ended with a 4-0 whitewash at the hands of the Australian Diamonds.
High performance head Keir Hansen is under no illusions as to the size of the task in front of the team, who have a large gap to close between now and the Commonwealth Games in April.
‘‘We’ve got a really open mind,’’ he said.
‘‘We’ll go through the review process, as we do at the end of every international season, and we’ll be as thorough as we possibly can be with that, and we’ll take the learnings and adjust our plans, and if that means inserting additional personnel, we’ll certainly look at that.
‘‘We want to give Janine and the team the best possible chance to win at the Commonwealth Games and the World Cup and we’re open-minded as to what that looks like.’’
Coach Janine Southby is two years into a four-year contract, which runs through to the end of the 2019 World Cup, and after the whitewash by the Diamonds and a closer-than-expected series win over the England Roses, she is facing the biggest challenge of her tenure.
The Ferns were embarrassed in the fourth quarter of the Constellation Cup finale last Saturday in Sydney, where they ended up slumping to a 16-goal defeat.
Southby said afterwards that it was ‘‘a little bit of a lot of things, more than any one thing in particular’’ that needed fixing, and the first one she brought up was the team’s lack of mental toughness.
The Ferns resident mental skills coach is Renzie Hanham, a karate master from Christchurch who worked closely with Gilbert Enoka and Ceri Evans to help the All Blacks with the mental side of their game, ahead of their 2011 Rugby World Cup triumph, and who Southby has credited with being integral to her growth and development as a coach.
Hansen said Hanham had spent time in camp and on tour with the Ferns this season, doing one-on-one sessions with players and staff, and he figures to play an important role going forward as the team tries to address their mental shortcomings.
‘‘They key thing is how you perform under pressure, and that’s the result of all the things you do and how you prepare lead- ing into competition,’’ said Hansen.
‘‘We’re not just talking days here, we’re talking weeks and months. It’s those habits you develop in your preparation.
‘‘The work Renzie does with the team is part of that, and we’re looking to keep growing the group in terms of how they prepare for competition, and that will show in the critical moments, we hope.’’
Some of the Ferns will be GETTY IMAGES involved in next weekend’s Fast5 World Series in Melbourne, but they are all set to have November off to rest and recover, before coming back into camp in December.
They will be hurting and Southby was eager to stress that the team knows they have let the netball community down over the past fortnight.
‘‘People won’t see what’s happening inside the group, but there is a level of accountability inside the group, and people are holding themselves and each other accountable,’’ she said.
‘‘There’s no hiding behind things in this group.’’
It was a sentiment echoed by Hansen.
‘‘The group is really committed to the Ferns through these two pinnacle events that we’ve got coming up,’’ he said.
‘‘But they also know that the process is a learning one, they’re committing to that learning and committing to getting better, and on the back of this series, we’ll continue to do that as we move forward to the next phase in January with the Quad Series.’’
‘ There’s no hiding behind things in this group.’ JANINE SOUTHBY