Netball: Australians to reassert dominance, if...

Norma Plummer. Photo / Martin Sykes

Norma Plummer must have been reading Rudyard Kipling. When asked her hopes and expectations for the Australian players in this year's ANZ Championship, the answer resembled Kipling's most famous poem, If.

"If they get opportunities and take them," says Plummer.

"If they can stand up to the pressure; if they can take on any opposing player and run them into the ground. I don't want complacency; I want enthusiasm, drive and determination. I want them to be desperate.

"If they haven't got that mentality, then you don't really need that player in the team."

Along with the rest of the Australian outfit, Plummer took the Delhi reverse particularly badly. Any loss to New Zealand is bad enough, but it was the manner of the defeat which hurt most.

In the double extra-time epic, it was the Diamonds who failed when it mattered; the Australians who wobbled under pressure; bucking the trend of recent history when they have usually closed out the tight ones.

It makes this season's ANZ Championship more intriguing, with the Australian players looking to re-establish dominance over their opposite numbers in New Zealand.

"I think the Swifts, Vixens and Mystics are the three top teams and depth will be very important, especially with the double-headers," says Plummer. "The Swifts have got the best bench in the whole of the competition, probably followed by the Vixens. The Mystics have some depth there, too. You need to expose new talent and you would be mad not to.

"If you make the finals and someone is off their game, you need a back up. It is better if you have actually worked with them and put them out on court."

From an Australian perspective, Plummer has no issue with the compressed nature of this year's league.

Super rounds mean teams will sometimes play three games in little over a week.

"Our girls will handle that pretty well," says Plummer. "You have to remember the New Zealanders don't do a quarter of the flights our girls do and they did it in the Commonwealth Bank Cups for 11 years. Flying from Perth to Brisbane is a fairly long haul compared to the flights your girls have."

Plummer has been clocking up air miles, "running platinum" on her Qantas frequent-flyer card. She gets to two games a weekend and has a team of four selectors and assistants keeping an eye on talent.

Just like last year, the selection approaches of Ruth Aitken and Plummer could not be more different. While Aitken will pick her Ferns side after round five of the ANZ Championship (mid March), Plummer will wait until after the grand final at the end of May.

"I like to give my players the whole season," explains Plummer. "I like to see them under pressure in play-off matches. I want to see pressure games.

"That showed up last year where the quality went missing."

She is not expecting any changes to the Ferns' line-up.