After the ANZC split up and NZL won the NWC, there was a lot of talk about how ANZP had saved the Ferns and allowed them to go back into their old style of play. I think that was true at the time because the Ferns defensive core had grown up with the intensity of ANZC (Rore, Kopua, Watson etc.) but were able to develop that tough zone. Their attackers and midcourters had also had a lot of exposure to high intensity netball or were actually playing in SSN (Langman, Tuta’ia).
However, with the new generation that’s come through I think the lack of week in week out intensity in ANZP has left them stunted when coming up against the best. Wilson, Jury, Crampton and Nweke are all players that dominate at ANZP level but were completely unable to adapt to the new players they haven’t been used to coming up against. SSN has some weird rules and things like timeouts aren’t good preparation, but you only need to look at Jamaica and England to see how battle-hardened players become from the week in week out high intensity competition. The Ferns should encourage some of their best to play SSN, use ANZP as a pathway and for younger Ferns to gain court time and experience. Players like Watson and Ekenasio would have absolutely helped, but they won’t be around forever and some of the young New Zealand talents like Nweke, Jury and Wilson need to be challenged more at franchise level.
