Ready for the court
Earlier this year the Southern Steel opened their season to empty stands. Now that the rest of the competition will be played in Auckland, co-caption Gina Crampton says she is excited and lucky to get back into game play – in spite of the challenging commute.
Southern Steel co-captain Gina Crampton is raring to go. It’s been more than two months since the Ascot Park Hotel-sponsored team opened their season with a 54–48 loss to the Magic in Dunedin in the shadow of the Covid-19 lockdown, in what is now commonly referred to as a ghost game played in front of empty stands.
A revised 10-week season gets under way in less than a month with the Steel taking on the Tactix on June 20, alongside the other franchise teams that will play the entire competition at the Auckland Netball Centre in Mt Wellington.
The Steel, along with the Tactix and the Pulse, will commute for games by charter plane. It’s hardly ideal, but then so much of life hasn’t been since the pandemic started.
‘‘We are pretty lucky that we got a green light for a competition. It’s exciting, and now we’ve got a couple of weeks to get ready for that,’’ she said.
‘‘It’s going to be tough on travelling teams, but that’s just something we are going to have to deal with. We all want to be playing. I think it’s going to be a hotly contested competition – there’s a real even spread of what the teams are looking like.’’
Crampton counts herself as having been fortunate with her lockdown experience.
The 28-year-old returned home to Wellington and enjoyed the most time she’s spent with her family since leaving for university in Dunedin.
With her partner and brother in the same bubble, she had training partners on tap and the nearby Wadestown hill provided plenty of variation in terms of hill sprints and stair sessions.
‘‘My brother and partner are pretty much fitter, faster and stronger than me in everything, so it was good for me,’’ she said.
‘‘There were a couple of girls who had to train by themselves during lockdown and that would have been pretty tough as a mental challenge.’’
Even then things weren’t easy. During the ‘‘will they, won’t they’’ phase, it was tough to garner motivation when it wasn’t clear what, if any, sort of netball season would be on offer, Crampton admits.
The Silver Ferns and their ANZ Premiership counterparts agreed to a salary freeze earlier this month in a bid to ease the hardship being faced across netball organisations.
‘‘At the start, the first three or four weeks, I was really into it. And then the motivation levels sort of started to drop. I really wanted to get back with the girls and the team – it makes it a whole lot easier in terms of the training,’’ Crampton said.
‘‘Obviously we weren’t as badly hit as other people around the country. I think everyone is just happy that we’ve actually got a competition to play in.
‘‘It was nice to know that we were going to have something to come back to once the lockdown was lifted. We’ve made sure we stayed in touch with each other and were ready to go when we could.’’
The Steel were able to resume training just over a week ago and Crampton said preparation would be tailored to overcome some of the challenges created by the unscheduled break.
‘‘It’s still the same game; we are still playing the same teams. I think it’s really important over these first couple of weeks that we clean up on our ball skills and those things we weren’t able to do during lockdown, and then get into our structures a week or so before our first game.’’
Despite that opening round loss and a challenging travel itinerary still to come, Crampton rates the Southern Steel’s ability to make an impact on the competition when it does finally get under way.
‘‘I think we will be a team that people underestimate a little bit, as per usual. I think once we get going we will be a team who will be really competitive and going for that top spot.’’