Netball: Pressure on Ferns' selectors to get it right

Silver Ferns coach Ruth Aitken. Photo / Getty Images

After months of planning and preparation for an intense 12 months of international netball, today marks the first step in what will be the most challenging period of Silver Ferns coach Ruth Aitken's career.

The New Zealand selectors are to name the extended squad today that will compete for a place in the Commonwealth Games team. The team for Delhi will be named at the end of the month following a week of trials.

With just eight months separating this year's Commonwealth Games and the 2011 World Championships, the 12 names read out on July 30 will, all going well, be the same 12 heading to Singapore this time next year.

It puts the national selectors under huge pressure to get the right mix now.

Aitken admits the stress will only intensify.

"It would be fair to say it will be the biggest challenge we've faced, because the two [tournaments] are going to be inextricably linked. The confidence you take out of one leading in to the other will be very important. We've talked a lot about the two events being linked and the squad being the same," she said.

"While you can never guarantee there won't be things happening along the way, you would want the core of your gameplans established this year because we've only got a couple of weeks after the end of ANZ next year before the team go away to worlds."

Aitken is eager to get her hands on the team. "Often it's actually worse when you haven't got your team together, because you're in big planning mode, but there's a lot of things that are outside your control - and most coaches are control freaks," she said with her trademark chuckle.

With room for up to 18 players in the squad, there aren't expected to be many surprises today but intrigue surrounds which players won't make the cut for the Games team.

There will be at least one shock omission, with Magic shooter Jodi Brown believed to have made herself unavailable for selection. Before the weekend's loss to the Adelaide Thunderbirds in the ANZ Championship grand final Brown was talking up her chances of earning a recall to the national side.

But it appears the 29-year-old has had a change of heart and decided that with a young family, she cannot commit to the Ferns schedule.

That may open the door for rookie Steel shooter Julianna Naoupu to get her first national call-up. The other potential bolter is Naoupu's Steel teammate Te Huinga Reo Selby-Rickit, who had the goal-defence bib thrust on her this year with former Fern Sheryl Scanlan sidelined with recurring calf problems.

But Selby-Rickit's fate may be determined by how soon the selectors choose to rush Anna Scarlett back in to the national environment.

Speculation is rife that the lanky defender will be named in today's squad.