Proteas job ‘is not going to be easy’

A new era for South African netball has begun with the appointment of Dorette Badenhorst as Proteas coach with Dumisani Chauke has her assistant.

The duo will have their work cut out for them as they look to improve on the legacy left by former coach Norma Plummer.

Plummer decided to retire from coaching after leading the Proteas to a fourth-place finish at this year’s Netball World Cup in Liverpool.

“It is a great privilege and honour to coach the Proteas team,” Badenhorst said. “It is not going to be easy, especially in the first three months playing in three big competitions.”

Badenhorst and Chauke will have to prepare the team for the upcoming Africa Netball Cup in Cape Town which will be held between 18 and 22 October before a three-Test series against England at the end of November in the Mother City.

They face their biggest challenge in January when they will be involved in a four-nation series against England, Jamaica and defending world champions New Zealand.

The appointments are the first steps in building a strong team that will be able to compete for silverware when the country hosts the Netball World Cup in Cape Town in 2023.

Badenhorst said one of their first strategic tasks was to expand the pool of talent that can represent the Proteas.

“We have to go out there and identify more players, our pool of players is really not big enough, we definitely need more depth,” Badenhorst said.

“We need that second team that is at the same level as the Proteas, and that is a goal for us as a management team.

It won’t happen overnight, but we need to make sure the depth is better than over the last four years.”