Alice Soper: Blaming one person for poor results will leave netball poorer, just ask rugby

Silver Ferns coach Dame Noeline Taurua. Photo / Photosport

A faltering domestic league, a rise in competition for talent, a debate around offshore player selection and a failure for a once-dominant sport to keep pace with the times. No, I’m not talking about rugby. But not unlike rugby, Netball New Zealand has decided that the cause and solution for all the current woes is who they select as the head coach.

Asking Dame Noeline Taurua to reapply for her job is messy. If Netball New Zealand is taking its lead from rugby, it only needs to look at Wayne Smith’s coaching career to see how this plays out. Asked to reapply, rugby’s “Professor” was overlooked in favour of John Mitchell. Only for Smith to then be brought back as part of the cleanup crew, first for the All Blacks rebuild and then for the Black Ferns’ World Cup campaign.

Smith is well regarded as one of the coaching greats but, then again, so was Taurua until five minutes ago. So great was her ability, she could turn a team’s fortunes around in just 11 months to secure an improbable World Cup win. But even the best coach can only do so much if the problems extend well beyond your current squad.

Netball has a vibe problem. Just like rugby and its appeal towards traditional notions of manhood, netball’s culture is rooted in old gender stereotypes. Uniforms and rules were designed within the limits of patriarchal thinking. If rugby is your dad’s game, netball is your mum’s, neither of which are as popular with the younger generation. You only need to take one look around the court at your next game to see that reflected in the stands.

The sport at large is yet to break free of its colonial ties. Mirroring rugby’s inability to move beyond members of the Commonwealth, it has struggled to become a truly global game. New Zealand’s regular test schedule consists of a handful of nations on loop. There is fear that the potential collapse of the Commonwealth Games could only intensify the insular nature of the international scene.

Wayne Smith was called in to coach the Black Ferns for the 2022 World Cup. Photo / Getty Images

Netball New Zealand could take a leaf from rugby’s playbook and look to introduce a Moana Pasifika and perhaps a Fijian Drua side to their domestic league. Offering an opportunity for global development and a much-needed shake-up. That would require an appetite for innovation though, something sorely missing from the current netball administration.

Netball New Zealand, once the pioneer of women’s professional sports, is no longer setting the example for us all to follow. When the transtasman split occurred in 2016, they simply acted like the crossover never happened. Quickly reverting back to the 1990s domestic format. The only thing that has really changed is the name of the bank sponsoring the competition.

However, the world of sport is almost unrecognisable from that time period. Fans’ appetites have refined and are no longer satiated by the entertainment on offer. Just like rugby, we have seen broadcast production standards increase while in-person experience has stagnated. Domestic netball in Australia and other codes like cricket, have offered in-game periods of rule variation to shake things up. The Tauihi Basketball league introduced the Rapid League to give more development time to a wider pool of players and a faster-paced alternative for new fans.

All the while Netball New Zealand stands still. Squandering its first-mover advantage in women’s professional sport. Blaming a person, not a system for underwhelming results. Dame Noeline was the last band-aid applied to cover the bleeding of players and fans from the sport. Netball can reapply the dressing with another coach but without addressing their real issues, things could quickly get septic.