Netball: Centre of attention beyond any doubt

By RICHARD BOOCK

Temepara Clark will never again doubt the veracity of those old drama-in-real-life accounts; the ones in which unlikely subjects acquire superhuman strength to save the day.

You know the headlines. "Grandmother, 78, lifts fire-engine to free daughter". Or, "Fat man sprints 50km to raise alarm". Add this one: "Mother of two flies at world netball championships".

The centre of attention during the final in Jamaica, Clark returned home on Thursday still puzzling about what drove her to such heights in Monday's showdown against Australia.

In one of the greatest performances in a New Zealand centre's bib since the days of Sandra Edge, Clark terrified the Australian mid-court with her slashing runs and intercepts, deservedly winning the crowd's MVP award.

In terms of a spectacle, it was possibly even more dramatic for television viewers, as Clark was often in the air and coming from out of screen, giving no hint of her impending arrival.

The 27-year-old had the edge throughout on her Australian opposites and was far too good for English umpire Jo Kelly, who clearly hadn't been prepared for such athleticism, and threw her in the sin-bin for repeated contact.

Clark's son, Erin-Wayne, was watching the game at school with his teacher and classmates when the banishment occurred. His teacher glanced at him, raised an eyebrow and the five year-old said: "That's my mummy".

But if Clark's effort before being sin-binned had been noteworthy, her performance when she returned was out of this world, and it soon became clear that no-one - be it an Australian opponent or a half-blind umpire - was going to stop her.

"It was as if I took one breath at the start of the game and never came back up for another," Clark said. "It was weird, as if I played the entire game on one lungfull of air."

Her most challenging moment arrived during the final quarter, not in the shape of an opposition counter-attack or a particularly fierce rivalry, but in the form of umpire Kelly.

"When she said, 'come here, centre - I'm sending you off for two centre-passes,' I thought, 'no way' - but knew I had to go.

"Walking down the baseline was like something from the movie The Green Mile; it took so long."

Clark believes she was hard done by, not only because she thought she was contesting possession fairly, but also because Kelly sin-binned her for contact on the basis of a warning delivered earlier for breaking.

"I'd been warned for breaking, but not for contact. When she called me over the second time, she said, 'I told you before' - as if it was a repeat offence. You could tell by my body language what I thought of that."

The sin-binning came at a critical stage of the game, reducing the Silver Ferns to six and leaving a question mark over whether Clark could shake off the setback and recover.

As it happened, she more than recovered, rejoining the contest with the zeal of a woman possessed, to the delight of a sellout, mostly Jamaican, crowd that had adopted her as its own.

"I realised that when I got back out there, I owed my mates," Clark said. "They had been playing one down, so I knew I had to do everything I could to pay them back. I owed them big time."

Clark laughs at the memory of the Jamaican time-keepers and officials who were sitting behind her as she cooled her heels, urging her to get back on the court and to carry on where she left off.

And she marvelled at the support from the Kingston crowd, who threw themselves behind the Ferns after the sin-binning - to such an extent that the Australians talked about it later as the turning point.

Undoubtedly, the best centre in the world after her effort in the Caribbean, the Auckland mid-courter can look back on a wild ride of a netball career, one in which the peaks and troughs have come in equal measures.

She was first selected for New Zealand in 1996, dropped and not picked again until 2000, when she was again discarded after the series against Jamaica. To add to the struggle, her father Ian passed away last year.

"It has been a rollercoaster ride," Clark said of her career. "But you learn so much from it and you're better for the experience. It's just a big learning curve and you need to remember that without the downs, there wouldn't be the ups.

" I'm just so glad to have that gold medal at the end of it."

And is she tiring yet of having to recount her every act during that helter-skelter hour in Kingston?

"Well, no actually," she said. "I keep remembering the emotions - it was just so cool. I'm not sick of it yet by any means. I love re-living it, because this time it's got a happy ending."