It was a bruising encounter. The opposition was bigger, taller and, unfortunately for our team, not lacking in skills.
They were more aggressive, too, or at least we thought so, we parents of the more slightly built team that was being comprehensively thrashed.
Our side was never going to come off better
in a competition with that much pushing, shoving, and elbowing. One of our players was sent sprawling, "accidentally" bumped by her opposite number.
"Come on, ref," hollered one dad. "This isn't rugby."
No, indeed. This was netball, and intermediate school netball, at that. But it may as well have been rugby for all the aggression we witnessed.
My competitive 12-year-old came off the court sporting bruises and a scratch. (None of which, I should add, would have mattered in the slightest if her team had actually won the game.)
Her disgruntled team-mate complained that her opposite number had pushed her. "Well, next time," her mother advised, "push her back." Bad idea, I thought, looking at the size difference.
I found myself thinking that it was a good thing that netball is a no-contact sport. Otherwise, we would really have been in trouble.
I was also starting to see why some parents were so fearful of their children coming up against big Polynesian kids.
The team that had just beaten us was almost entirely Pacific Island. Our weedier group, being from a more affluent school, was mostly Pakeha. And we were no match for their superior size and skills.
That early size disparity is apparently the reason that more Pakeha children now play soccer (18 per cent) than rugby (12 per cent), according to 2001 figures from the Government's sport and recreation body, Sparc. (Though it doesn't quite explain why more Pacific Islanders played soccer, 19 per cent, than rugby, 15 per cent.)
Not that I'd expect to see a similar exodus of Pakeha kids from netball. Its toughest practitioners these days are as likely to be Pakeha as Polynesian.
Besides, whatever pretensions netball might once have had to being a genteel, ladylike sort of sport, it's clearly long since been left behind.
According to ACC figures, while rugby is still the sport most injurious to health, netball ranks second-equal with soccer, accounting for some 7 per cent of new sports injuries.
When did netball get so rough? Probably about the same time it started attracting prime-time coverage and the trappings of professional sponsorship.
Those gut-wrenching losses to the more combative Australians probably didn't help, either.
Certainly what's happening in the fiercely competitive heat of A-grade Saturday netball is a far cry from my daughter's first days in the sport.
Back then, the 9-year-old and her team-mates were inclined to be a tad too polite. They spent much of the game apologising to the other side for getting in their way, and treating the ball as if it were something to be avoided at all costs. Not surprisingly, they came bottom of their grade.
Things have definitely changed since then. Having had plenty of practice at losing gracefully, they've discovered that winning is infinitely preferable.
And that netball is definitely not a game for sissies - as if they didn't know that already from watching their tough, Amazonian heroes playing in the national league on prime-time television.
Friday's final between the Southland Sting and the Northern Force was a case in point. It was as scrappy and as hard-fought as any football match. At one stage, a tussle between shooter Donna Loffhagen and Force defender Kate Dowling ended up in a tangle of limbs and what looked suspiciously like a headlock.
Today's netball players seem to be expected to show as much grit and stoicism as their rugby counterparts.
At this year's semifinal, Loffhagen played on despite an obviously injured hand, and her tea-mate Adine Harper soldiered on after a head-thumping fall.
And last year, when the Sting came up against the Canterbury Flames in the final, Flames shooter Belinda Colling ended up with a black eye after a collision with Bernice Mene. Her eye swollen almost shut, she never for a moment considered not playing on.
"It was just a sore eye," the Flames' coach, Margaret Foster, said at the time. "She still had the other one. It wasn't like she had a broken leg or anything." No, I suppose not.
Mind you, Colling is one of those players that says the "pedantic" rulings in the game haven't caught up with the increased physicality of the sport.
"I think it needs to open up to allow that free-flowing game ... The game is fast and physical and at the moment the players almost feel a little guilty for wanting to contest the ball."
And if the players are becoming more physical and aggressive, Silver Ferns coach Ruth Aitken is not complaining. They'll need to be, she says, if they're going to withstand the likes of Jamaica and Australia at the world championships in July.
The days of the Kiwis being the nice girls of world netball - and being pipped by the tougher, more aggressive Australians - seem well and truly over.
They've hardened up. And so, somewhat to my regret, have the pre-teens playing netball on Saturdays.
* Email Tapu Misa
It was a bruising encounter. The opposition was bigger, taller and, unfortunately for our team, not lacking in skills.
They were more aggressive, too, or at least we thought so, we parents of the more slightly built team that was being comprehensively thrashed.
Our side was never going to come off better
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