Netball: Aitken sizes up a tough sport

A visit to Danish handball champs Viborg HK was an eye-opener for Ruth Aitken. Photo / AP

Rather than travelling around the country keeping a watchful eye on her New Zealand players in the transtasman league, Silver Ferns coach Ruth Aitken has spent the past few weeks in Scandinavia studying professional handball.

No, Aitken is not considering taking her expertise overseas, although by the sound of it the money would be tempting. But she was more interested in developing as a coach and learning about how other elite women's sports operate in a professional environment.

The opportunity came about when Aitken was awarded a Prime Minister's scholarship, with the money allowing her to travel to Denmark and Norway to observe the popular European sport of handball.

The game, which originated in Northern Europe in the late 19th century, is a very fast and extremely physical sport in which two teams of seven players pass and bounce a ball up court to throw with the aim of getting the ball into the goal of the opposing team.

Women's handball is fully professional in Europe, with the top players earning around $250,000.

The idea to learn more about the sport's set-up originated through a discussion Aitken had with Graeme Robson, her coaching support manager at the Academy of Sport.

"When we looked at my professional development plan, one of the things was looking at how another elite women's sport comes together as an international team," said Aitken.

"I'd always expressed an interest in the handball because I felt there was some strong links and a kind of crossover to netball. You know, running, passing, pushing, shoving - those sorts of things."

Aitken travelled with Silver Ferns physiotherapist Sharon Kearney, who was also on a scholarship to look at injury prevention programmes that they run in relation to handball.

The pair were lucky enough to link up with Danish club Viborg HK, the eventual European champions, the week they were preparing for the finals.

With the players training fulltime doing strength and skill work in the mornings and then more game-specific work in the afternoons, Aitken said she learned a lot that could be applied to netball. "I certainly felt very lucky to be a fly on the wall during that week," she said.

"It was just really great to see another top women's team in action, to see the fitness levels they've got, to see the intensity of their training, how much emphasis they put on strength training and just to I suppose keep adding to our knowledge bank."

There are some things, however, that Aitken does not see herself implementing back home.

"One of the things we probably won't do is they actually have some specialist wrestling coaches, because they have a lot of pushing and shoving and physical things."

After getting an insider's view of the club scene, Aitken and Kearney moved on to Norway to examine the national scene with the help of Norwegian captain Else-Marthe Sorlie Lybekk, who led her team to the gold medal at last year's Olympics.

"We just spent time with her looking at their build-up to the Olympics, how they worked on their team culture and also spent quite a bit of time with the national team physiotherapist as well, looking at their training intensities."

While Aitken is eager to make use of what she has learned, her immediate concern is to get back up to speed and work her way through a backlog of recorded ANZ Championship games.

"I've certainly been keeping track of selectors' comments and getting updates and reading reports, which has been very interesting.

"So I do feel I've got a handle on where things are at, but, yes, there's a power of television catching up to be done."