MORE THAN a decade ago I joined the old Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune staff to play in an indoor netball competition at what is now the Action Sports Centre at Pandora Pond, Napier.
Having had a taste of the "non-contact" sport in Dunedin several years before that, I enjoyed the competitiveness but not the frustration that came with it. The mixed social teams were allowed to have no more than two men on the court at any time.
Like most blokes, I never got a handle on how you can possibly be infringing when you haven't touched an opposing player.
"You have to be one metre away from her," an officious female referee said, pinging me over and over again.
I had asked for it, grinning and taking that posture of resignation which could easily be interpreted as ridiculing the whistle blower.
However, a few weeks into the competition the opposing teams started getting more aggressive.
Suddenly in the second round, teams who had lost to us in the first, had tall timber shooting and defending.
After we got a thumping in one of those games a player told me the two blokes were actually amateur basketballers.
From therein, we simply enjoyed the beer and camaraderie, as it were, because there's no fairytales in Davids beating up Goliaths in most sport mismatches.
Consequently it might be time for Irene van Dyk to seriously start considering retirement.
Once the cool customer who simply stood under the hoop, waiting for her Silver Ferns and franchise teammates to relay the ball to her, Van Dyk was happy to dunk the shots and smile at the opposition defenders punctuated by that trademark clapping of encouragement as the ball made its way back to the centre circle.
It wasn't long before the rival Diamonds and Australian Transtasman franchises had the measure of the Waikato/Bay of Plenty Magic shooter.
The body-slamming tactics kicked in, making contact with a player in full flight rapidly become terribly exciting and rewarding.
Donna Wilkins (nee Loffhagen), who earlier had qualms about a South Africa-born claiming a bib over a New Zealander and had switched to basketball in a huff, no doubt would have watched the developments with interest.
A player with an effervescent personality, Van Dyk, who is now a naturalised Kiwi, was a great postergirl for netball, not just in this country but worldwide.
Magic coach Noeline Taurua, realising the lanky shooter needed to toughen up, combined with the Silver Ferns stable to help her build that solid stature, not just physically but mentally, too.
But Van Dyk's outburst after the loss against the Norma Plummer-coached West Coast Fever last weekend suggests her time is nigh.
"I've been playing netball for a very long time and I can honestly say I have never come across a defensive pair that are as physical and get away with murder," the 40-year-old said after the dust-up.
"There's a fine line between playing with skill and coming out and being dirty, and I think they crossed the line."
It appears Van Dyk needs to toughen up now that the Transtasman Championship, and, no doubt, the test series against the Aussies, has hit another crescendo of physicality.
Watch the promotions for the netball on Sky TV and there's no mistaking the biffo is the marketing point.
It's all good to point a finger at the officials and whinge about how the rules are inaccessible and inefficient but the reality is take out the action women in bibs and the sponsors will spit the dummy.
The reality is our franchises, until last season, haven't really cut the mustard.
The Silver Ferns and the Diamonds have ruled netball because of their style of play.
Like it or not, we play all our sports based on the success of the All Blacks, that is rugby.
Soccer and basketball are no different.
Last season, the Wellington basketball franchise showed the Hawks what physicality was all about in the semifinals as the game deteriorated into an almost bar-room brawl but every coach tells imports that's the Kiwi brand of NBL.
Imports who show no intestinal fortitude for physicality are immediately put on a flight back home.
Consequently, any suggestions of tweaking netball rules to ensure less dust rises from the court will only have Plummer and Co ranting and raving about how the Kiwi franchises are seeking some sort of parity off the arena.
I said to a colleague before Van Dyk's mercy plea that netball is fast becoming the domain of giants at each end.
The others, mostly with high-twitch fibres, will simply become relay specialists.
It seems the only way to stay in the game is to change the diets of future professional netballers to produce more hybrid tall timber.