Not the warts and all review I was hoping for unfortunately. Nothing a down in the dumps Ferns fan loves more than a post mortem on our NWC performance.
Key/worthwhile notes:
– Too structured and not even bandwidth for players to read the game and play instinctively (Anna Harrison). Toeava’s name got thrown into the conversation at that point as that player (Adine, endorsed by Harrison). Perhaps for all the talk about conditioning concerns across a 10 day tournament, maybe Toeava was seen as not being able to conform to the attacking structure Taurua wanted to play??
– Anna Harrison asked if we could resurrect the ANZC again (concur :whistle: ). And said the Pulse’s game style was the closest thing NZ players had to that Australian style. Conclusion you can draw there is our players, particularly those emerging in the Ferns environment aren’t battle hardened for 60 minutes of intense, physical, world class netball.
– Wai Taumaunu got a mention (via Anna Stanley who had caught up with TA Keenan). Wai was quoted as saying the Ferns attack end is playing bumper cart netball – they hit their player and retract.
– Game plan was referenced without being discussed at length. Particularly all the offensive contacts. Adine questioned the incessant sealing and presenting while Anna said it was good to have in your repertoire, but you need to mix it up.
– Substitutions were raised. Particularly comments from Noels throughout the tournament saying “we were going to, then something did X”. Marinkovich was cited as getting it right and making tactical/anticipatory changes versus the Ferns and the example of putting Jane Watson on with two minutes to go against England.. Adine called Taurua’s changes as quite frantic and not assured of years past. I think back to that cross over game against the Diamonds at NWC 2019 when we lost by 1, but the Ferns clawed an 8-9 goal deficit back. The changes were being rung left and right, but it was bang on. Taurua said she knew she had more left in the tank if we were going to play Aus again, and she was right.
– Nothing mentioned about the Ferns shooting accuracy (geez NWC 2015 and CWG 2018 we would’ve killed for these stats haha), more so the fact the shooters weren’t comfortable going to post. TBF I would shake in my boots shooting over Stirling too.
