KEY POINTS:
It's not even two years old, but New Zealand's role in netball's showpiece transtasman competition looks distinctly wobbly.
The second season of the ANZ Championship is five months away, but already two of the five initial New Zealand franchise coaches have gone.
Remember Yvonne Willering? It's hard to
forget a larger-than-life personality who coached the disappointing Northern Mystics last season.
Willering was axed shortly after the inaugural season ended. You can argue that when your team under-performs that's life, but in her case it appeared all a matter of timing. It's not that the former national coach had suddenly became a bad coach.
The Mystics had a dreadful run of losses early on. Willering went to the Mystics and offered to step down if that was what they wanted.
They didn't. She carried on, results picked up and the Mystics finished seventh. So, to put it mildly, she was surprised to receive the red card, having pulled things round.
Now Kate Carpenter, the Australian who coached the bottom-finishing Central Pulse, has been given the boot. Those in the know reckon the Pulse weren't as bad as their record suggests, that they pushed some far more qualified teams hard.
But sponsors have scarpered, the chairman and chief executive have resigned, a new board is in place. The franchise, who weren't talking yesterday, seem hopelessly disorganised. There is now talk of the Pulse being an under-21 team in disguise with the world youth champs in Rarotonga next August in mind. Excuse me?
Players approached by Carpenter with a view to being signed are unwanted. Yvette McCausland-Durie, the national under-21 coach, is being lined up to take charge.
Bucks seem to be being passed. The handling of the whole business appears shoddy.
Former Australian coach Jill McIntosh, who was a coaching consultant to Carpenter at the Wellington operation, said of her treatment by Netball New Zealand, "They've treated her like dirt ... absolutely appalling."
Here's a key question: Can New Zealand sustain five teams? Four were in the bottom five last season. Australia certainly can, given its size and population.
If Netball New Zealand didn't do their calculations on that equation before entering the partnership with the Australians, they should be drummed out of office. You would think that was the most basic start-up point.
Now it seems they are to preside over an age-group team in what's supposed to be the premier competition in the world, below international level. It's a nonsense.
They have allowed one franchise, the Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic, to grow bulging on-court muscles while other operations flounder.
How come Silver Ferns will sit on the bench next season when they would have been more gainfully employed elsewhere? Don't blame the Magic. You do what you are allowed to get away with.
So after the fanfare of kicking off the transtasman league featuring the best of the world's two best nations, plus a sprinkling of players from the next two - Jamaica and England - the trumpet's blowing a sour tune, at least around the capital.
