And the winner is .
Smart, authentic but most of all a winner, Noeline Taurua must make any shortlist of Australasia’s finest sports coaches. On Sunday, Taurua will attempt to guide her Sunshine Coast Lightning to a third straight Super Netball title in her farewell match against the New South Wales Swifts in the grand final in Brisbane.
Few would bet against it. Success follows Taurua wherever she goes and her stocks have never been higher after she masterminded New Zealand’s turnaround to topple Australia as world champions in July.
A veteran of 34 tests for the Silver Ferns, until a knee injury ended her playing days in 1999, Taurua found her calling in coaching.
In New Zealand, she won two national championships and a transTasman title with Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic – the first North Island team to win the former competition and the only Kiwi side in nine years to win the latter. She also spent one season transforming the Southern Steel in Invercargill.
She lifted them from a three-win 2015 trans-Tasman season to an unbeaten 11 wins and two draws regular season in 2016, before they lost successive finals matches.
Transferring her talents across the Tasman, when the new, worldleading Super Netball competition was established, she hardly missed a beat.
Defying conventional logic she quickly established a national sporting titan with the Lightning in their Sunshine Coast outpost, taking them to the first two Super Netball titles, this year’s minor premiership and another grand final.
The Lightning’s success this year is the more remarkable as they lost
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