Pressing pause on the world’s best netball league mid-season and re-starting it just six days after the conclusion to the sport’s pinnacle event – held 17,000km away – was always going to be problematic.
It was inevitable the spectacle would suffer. And now we’re back after an unprecedented five-week hiatus, it’s clear just how much lustre Super Netball has lost because of its World Cup break.
The weekend’s round made real many of the concerns raised when Netball Australia last year announced how it would structure the 2019 season, especially around potential player burnout.
Star players missed out through injury or illness, others turned in sub-par performances or simply looked exhausted on court, matches were scratchy, and a tense exchange between Collingwood coach Rob Wright and Diamonds midcourter Kelsey Browne highlighted the issue of player management in the shadows of such a big tournament.
Of the 31 Super Netball athletes who travelled to the World Cup in Liverpool, just 17 managed full 60-minute games at the weekend. Almost all are automatic starters and consistently play out matches. They’re also players fans come to watch. The extra players allowed by the league saw minimal court time, meaning coaches turned to their top lines, despite truncated preparations.
One of the league’s biggest names, Adelaide Thunderbirds shooter Maria Folau, who won the World Cup with the Silver Ferns earlier in the week, didn’t play in her side’s 63-57 loss to the Vixens due to illness. She pulled out just hours before the game on Sunday.
Her Thunderbirds teammate, English defender Layla Guscoth was missing too – and will be for the rest of the year – after sustaining an Achilles injury in Liverpool.
Another Roses player, Chelsea Pitman, battled hard for Adelaide, with 30 centre pass receives and 29 feeds, but couldn’t hide her fatigue after nine matches of elite netball in 17 days. Pitman, who played 60 minutes, had two uncharacteristic turnovers and one “bad hands” stat.
Vixens coach Simone McKinnis started with her three Diamonds – shooter Caitlin Thwaites, midcourter Liz Watson and defender Jo Weston – and only Weston got a break, of about 13 minutes.
Thwaites, who was one of the most accurate shooters at the World Cup but got minimal court time, looked spent from early in the match. But she stayed the course, eventually ending up out of position at goal attack and scoring 30 goals from 33 attempts at 91% accuracy. It was a performance Vixens fans will long remember for its sheer intrepidity.
With 31 centre pass receives and round-high 43 feeds, Watson didn’t play tired and Weston looked relatively unphased, despite her heavy workload in Liverpool.
While she ended up controversially winning the MVP in her side’s 53-49 win over the West Coast Fever, England and Swifts shooter Helen Housby – who flew directly from the UK to Perth, bypassing her Sydney home so tight was the timeframe – was below her best, shooting at 79% accuracy. She is usually up around 83%.
In the first quarter, Shannon Eagland twice won the ball from Housby, who stepped and only shot two from three attempts; a world away from the star who had 29 from 29 in England’s bronze medal match against South Africa in Liverpool.
Before the match Housby posted to Instagram, mocking her own comment about a having a “little bit of fatigue”, instead characterising her true feelings as “Help me Sir, I think I’m dying.”
Fever’s captain Courtney Bruce seemed to relish playing under Australian umpires again – in stark comparison to Liverpool, where she was whistled out of several games – and didn’t show any outward signs of jet lag. She almost single-handedly kept her side in the match with two gains and an intercept.
The west Australians’ other star player, Jamaican shooter Jhaniele Fowler, was again a tower of strength, but her accuracy dipped and she finished with 43 from 47 attempts, including three misses in the last, at 91%. While most shooters would take 91%, Fowler usually sits at 95%.
In Collingwood’s 63-56 loss to the Giants in Melbourne, England’s Geva Mentor – who said she felt fine physically, but “drunk” mentally given the demanding schedule – had one of her poorest games of the season. At half-time, the usual match-winner didn’t have an intercept or rebound to her name on Diamonds captain Caitlin Bassett.
Bassett looked solid, with 35 from 38, at 92% accuracy, and shared some of the best passages to date with her shooting partner, Roses player Jo Harten, who shot 23 from 27 and won MVP after playing three quarters.
The biggest talking point out of the Pies’ loss was a spat between Wright and Browne just before half-time which was caught on camera. After asking for “some positives” from her coach, a clearly upset Browne was told by Wright, “I can’t give you a positive when you’re not doing it. How about doing some, because at the moment, to me, you’re not.”
Following words from Browne not caught by the microphone, Wright added: “A bit less attitude I reckon, I don’t need it. Do your role.” And he benched Browne.
While Wright was quick to admit in an in-game interview he could have done better, social media lit up with fans who suggested the eccentric coach should take more care with a young player coming off a one-goal World Cup final defeat. It’s hard to argue with such sentiment.
In their side’s 66-64 win over the Firebirds, Sunshine Coast Lightning’s World Cup foursome, Kiwi superstar Laura Langman, Australian shooter Steph Wood and South African defenders Karla Pretorius and Phumza Maweni, all played 60 minutes, with Langman, predictably, in the best.
Despite scrappy patches, the Lightning got coach Noeline Taurua her second win of the week. A spirited Firebirds outfit was led by Gabi Simpson, who starred in her 100th game.
The first round back was always going to provide talking points, but it is what happens from hereon in – not just physically, but psychologically given the strains that are evident on both athletes and teams – that will define the season and the governing body’s decision to split the season in two.
