Wairarapa coach Kelly Sargent is confident she will have a competitive unit in this season's regional super league netball series. Sargent was delighted with both the quality of play and the skill of the participants at a trial game held on Wednesday evening and believes the 14 players selected by JoBooth, Trudy Hullena and Sargent herself to do the business for Wairarapa are capable of making a name for themselves. "I think we might just shock a few teams?we're pretty strong all-round," she said. Not surprisingly, eight of the players are from Harcourts, the side which dominated the premier league on the inter-club scene last season and set all sorts of goal scoring records in the process. And with those players already having a good understanding of each other's ability, that eases to some extent, the problems caused by Wairarapa having just a handful of practice sessions before their opening super league match on March 2. "Obviously it would have been nice to have a little longer to get things organised but with so many from the one club side combinations shouldn't be too much of a hassle," she said. At the same time though Sargent stresses that with only 12 players able to be named for any one game nobody was guaranteed a place in the starting line-up. "Everybody is on an equal footing, we'll let the training sessions sort out who gets to start," she said. Sargent knows the quality of competition facing Wairarapa this season will be much more formidable than when she took the province to success in the inaugural super league two seasons ago. Wairarapa are drawn in the same pool as Norths (Kapi Mana), Taita (Hutt Valley), St Marys Old Girls (Wellington), PIC (Wellington) and Convent Old Girls (Hutt Valley) and while she doesn't know the actual composition of those teams she respects all of them. "Honestly, I wouldn't think there will be any easy games, the days when you could go into a match expecting a win are well and truly over," she said. "You really have to go out there and earn it."
