Silver Ferns not mentally tough enough: Southby
When the Silver Ferns next take the court, they need to be mentally tougher than they have been over the past fortnight.
That was how coach Janine Southby saw it on Saturday night, in the aftermath of her team’s 58-42 loss to the Australian Diamonds in Sydney, a result that consigned them to a 4-0 series defeat in the Constellation Cup.
‘‘We need to be a whole lot mentally tougher to deal with what comes our way,’’ she said.
‘‘At times we’re really guilty of letting situations affect us and getting into a little bit of a hole and not being able to get ourselves out.’’
That lack of mental toughness was on display throughout the series, where the Diamonds were better able to take control of games and pull away when decisive moments arose, winning by eight, 12, and 16 goals in the final three tests after a relatively close first match in Auckland.
Not helping the Silver Ferns’ cause were a litany of unforced errors, especially in big moments, such as when they would win turnover ball and throw it away rather carelessly, an all too common sight.
On Saturday, there were also penalties for holding on to the ball too long, breaking into the centre third too early, and for stepping while holding on to the ball, all of which are basics of the game.
‘‘We’re the first to say we’ve let ourselves down, and it’s just dumb stuff, really dumb stuff,’’ said Southby.
‘‘Stepping, breaking - at this level you’ve just got to be better than that, and we weren’t and that’s probably the biggest frustration.
‘‘We’ve talked about it and talked about it and we can’t be putting ourselves in a position where the umpires have any doubt. We’ve got to better than that.’’
The Silver Ferns are set to get November off, to have time to rest and recharge after a busy year, but they will be back in camp in December, as they continue to prepare for the Commonwealth Games next April.
Between now and then, Southby and her coaching staff will look back over the Constellation Cup, and the rest of the international season to plot a course forward.
‘‘We need to take some time to really be clear and make sure we channel our energies into the right things ... because we know six months is not a lot of time to turn this around.’’
While 2017 has ended badly, Southby remains confident her team can be in the hunt for gold on the Gold Coast. The last time the Silver Ferns lost four in a row to the Diamonds was at the end of 2014, but the next time they played, in the pool stages of the 2015 World Cup, the Ferns won, so it’s not an impossible task.
As she tries to help them take those steps, Southby believes the four losses of the past fortnight will serve as a wake-up call.
‘‘We got some young players out there and they know what it’s about now and because they know what it’s about they know what have to do in the next six months, so that’s a real positive.
‘‘Until now it’s been about me and Yvette [McCausland-Durie, Southby’s assistant] telling them, and until they experience it, they don’t really believe it, so now they’ve experienced it and they know how hard it is and I believe in them learning really quickly from this and bouncing back.’’