Netball's Mene benefits

By FIONA RAE

Once again, we are in the midst of netball fever. Our national game for girls — and some boys — has never been as popular and the television viewership, particularly of tests with Australia, is reaching rugby-like proportions.

Some 200,000 of us get out and play the game. It is the most-played sport at secondary school.

Despite its non-professional status, it is the professional approach of NetballNZ that is fostering and promoting the sport from the ground up and that means from as young as 5.

For proof, just check out the Fun Ferns junior netball for children 5 to 7 on
netballnz.co.nz — after all, today's Fun Ferns are tomorrow's Silver Ferns.

Silver Ferns captain Bernice Mene has seen the rise and rise of netball in the 10 years she's been playing for the national team. Television coverage has pushed its popularity and, as she says, everyone loves a winning team. The Silver Ferns are consistently vying for the top place in the world with our traditional foes, the Australians.

Mene has been playing in this season's Coca-Cola Cup with Southern Sting, the eventual winners. In a heightened reflection of the rest of the country, they're mad for netball in Invercargill.

"They've had a lot of success and it's been something for them to cheer about, really. I think they'd do the same if their rugby team was doing as well. I think they see it as netball has put them on the map," she says.

Mene was "really confident" of the team going into the third test with Australia this Saturday. Training had been going well, including games against the New Zealand men's team.

The matches against Australia are always the hardest, but she says her match day nerves disappear once she's on the court and has touched the ball.

In an era of professional sport, the Silver Ferns could best be described as semi-professional. Team members either have jobs or studies.

Mene, a teacher of French, German and English at Auckland's Mt Albert Grammar School, says most of the team are "full on, from 6.30 til 10 at night". She is equivocal about the need for the sport to be professional.

"Sometimes I think that if we were professional we'd have more time to train and things like that, but it has been quite important for me to keep my brain going on the other side of things, like with my languages and study.

"It means it's not everything if you don't get in the team, it's not 'gosh, what am I going to do with my life now?' Like Lesley Nicol, who's not playing this series because she's doing her final medicine exams. It's good to have a balance there."

For Mene, the sport's the thing. So what would she have been doing if she had been short, rather than the graceful 1.89m, mercurial counter-attacking goal defence she is today?

"I'd still be playing netball in the mid court," she says. "Or some other sport. I just love the physical nature of sport."

And does her dad, Mene Mene, really ring up and check, like in the ad, that his little girl is looking after herself? Well, dad still thinks it's funny to ask.

"He does say that because he thinks it's a good joke," laughs Mene. "It gotten a bit tiresome now after a few years!" •

It's nearly 100 years since the Rev J. C. Jamieson introduced basketball to Auckland. Teams were formed from his Bible study classes at St Luke's Presbyterian church in Remuera in 1906.

Back then, the teams were nine-a-side, games were played on a paddock, and three bounces and throws the length of the paddock were allowed. Baskets were used for the goals (and were tipped out after a goal).

The game grew, although in rather contrary fashion, with different sets of rules being played in different centres — Otago played with seven players, Timaru with nine, meaning they couldn't play each other.

The first official representative match was played in Wellington in 1923 between Wellington and Canterbury. It was a win to the capital, 24-10. In 1925 the first annual meeting of the New Zealand association was held and the first New Zealand tournament was played in Dunedin in 1926 — Auckland the winner on the day.

Our long history of playing against Australia began in 1938, when a team sailed the Tasman to compete, but again, there were pesky rule differences (we had to play the Australian rule of seven-a-side). Meetings were held to determine rules for international games.

While the New Zealand team won half its official games in Australia, in 1948 (tours having been cancelled because of the war) the touring Australians won all three tests, all their provincial matches and lost only once in an unofficial game in Canterbury.

Tours to Fiji began in 1954, and the first World Tournament was held in England in 1963, with the Aussies becoming the first world champions, beating New Zealand 37-36 in the final.

But at the second world tournament in Perth in 1967, an unheralded New Zealand team beat the Australians in a thrilling final 40-34.

The 70s and 80s saw much the same pattern back and forth between the two countries, with the occasional presence of England in the top line-up (New Zealand was beaten 39-38 by England at the 1975 international tournament held here).

But it was the 1987 team that turned international netball upside down.

Coached by Lois Muir and containing great players such as Tracey Fear, Sandra Edge and Waimarama Taumaunu, the team were so dominant that no others came within 10 goals.

The Australians, with their aggressive play and one-on-one style often dominated the 90s, but the Silver Ferns 2001 went into this current test series having won two out of the previous four.