NZ comp being left behind
Netball New Zealand’s national premiership has quickly become a poor cousin to Australia’s glitzy new domestic league. New Zealand’s flagship competition, the ANZ Premiership, was dealt a crushing blow on Monday with Jamaican shooting supremo Jhaniele Fowler-Reid leaving the champion Southern Steel after five seasons for the Perth-based West Coast Fever.
Losing Fowler-Reid, the league’s best player and one of its few genuine stars, is a major setback for the profile of a competition which largely disappointed in year one.
Fowler-Reid became the second prominent name to leave the Kiwi competition for Australia in the same day with retired Silver Ferns centurion Leana de Bruin linking with the Adelaide Thunderbirds.
At 40 years of age, de Bruin is in the final stage of her career and you can’t fault her for wanting to experience a fresh challenge and cash in with a swansong season in Australia.
The New Zealand league would be in absolute strife if Silver Ferns shooting standout Maria Tutaia ends up in Australia. Seven of the eight Australian teams have revealed their squads for 2018, but the Thunderbirds are yet to unveil their shooters.
Tutaia is engaged to Australian rugby player Israel Folau and wasn’t one of the first four names announced by her Northern Mystics side this week.
She came agonisingly close to signing with an Australian team this year and her departure would signal alarm bells for both the Silver Ferns and national premiership.
Australia’s competition is now home to New Zealand’s most outstanding netballer (Laura Langman), most astute elite coach (Noeline Taurua) and the finest import playing in this country (Fowler-Reid) since the creation of the trans-Tasman league in 2008.
The chasm between the Australian and Kiwi leagues in their first season was distressing.
In terms of crowds, the standard of play, error rates, level of overseas imports and closeness of matches, Australia’s Super Netball was on a vastly superior standing.
Fans want worthwhile games, which go down to the wire, and Super Netball delivered with 27 of the 60 games decided by five goals or less. What an advertisement for the sport.
Compare that to New Zealand’s league, where 28 of the 47 clashes were mismatches with teams winning by more than 10 goals.
The Steel were in a class of their own too, going unbeaten in 16 games, and looking clear title favourites as early as week one.
While Super Netball, which allows unlimited imports, featured the cream of the overseas crop, including Geva Mentor and Jo Harten (England), Mwai Kumwenda (Malawi) and Romelda Aiken (Jamaica), the ANZ Premiership had several, who offered little.
Fowler-Reid and Magic shooter Lenize Potgieter were outstanding, but the Corbin sisters, Kadeen and Sasha (at the Tactix and Mystics respectively) and the Stars’ Fijian shooter Afa Rusivakula, weren’t any better than young Kiwi benchwarmers in the squads.
With Kiwi sides only allowed one import, it does mean greater courttime for New Zealand talent and more players to pick from for national coach Janine Southby.
Despite having queen-like status in Invercargill, Fowler-Reid was never going to stick around forever and after winning a title, you can understand her reasons for wanting to play in a stronger league.
The silver lining in Fowler-Reid’s departure will be that it creates a level playing field and evens out the competition.
Opposition sides had few answers to the 1.98m giant and the Steel’s frequent tactic of lobbing the ball into her under the hoop.
Next year, we’ll see just how clever Reinga Bloxham is as a coach or whether the Steel’s 2017 success was chiefly down to Fowler-Reid’s feats.