Netball: Mene going to great lengths to serve Sting

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Silver Ferns netball captain Bernice Mene faces a flying marathon next year which makes this week's trek from Auckland to South Africa look like a jaunt down to the dairy.

After Mene leads the New Zealanders to a netball doubleheader with South Africa and Australia, she moves to Auckland for a new teaching job.

But virtually every week she will fly south to Invercargill to train and play for the Southern Sting.

Such are her ties with the Sting, the two time Coca-Cola Cup champions, that she had no intention of leaving them. So the franchise will take care of her airfares when she journeys to the end of the country every Thursday after the school bell rings.

"I've got used to marking schoolwork on the plane, so it shouldn't be too bad," Mene said yesterday after the Ferns' first warm-up game.

That turned out to be a marathon in itself - a two-hour session against New Zealand A with a basketball score hardly worth mentioning.

Mene is an old hand at travelling between cities for netball. Her latest trips are between home in Dunedin and training in Southland.

This time it is a little further, so she has sold her house to take on the job at Mt Albert Grammar, teaching French, German and English.

In the meantime, Mene, one of six teachers in the New Zealand team, is finishing student reports for her old school while introducing a new flock of Silver Ferns to each other.

Among the newcomers is former Fijian captain Villimaina Davu, who made a big impact playing alongside Mene for the first time yesterday.

The pair put up a towering, solid wall of defence in the first three-sixths of the unorthodox game and held the New Zealand A side to scoring half as many goals as the Ferns.

The final score was 131-63, but Mene saw plenty of merit in the game.

"There was quite a bit of excitement just to be playing again. It feels like a whole new season," she said.

"We needed some new youth and enthusiasm in the team. This is a fresh team, they're all good fun, and they're really keen to learn together."

Shooter Irene van Dyk, heading back to her native South Africa wearing the crown of New Zealand netball personality of the year, played the full six spells yesterday, as did lively midcourter Temepara George.

The stand-out player for New Zealand A - the next tier of netball talent - was Auckland seventh-form student Nicolette Ropati, a promising shooter who was not afraid to mix it with Mene and Davu.

Coach Yvonne Willering has structured the three days in Auckland to resemble the South African itinerary. They played a midday game yesterday to match the timing of the first test against South Africa, and will play two 7 pm games against the A-side tonight and tomorrow - the same starting times for the tests against Australia and then the Proteas again.

The Australians, who will field the same side who crushed the Ferns earlier this year, could be seen to have an advantage in playing their national state championships this weekend.

"That could be to our advantage too," Mene said. "We're looking pretty fresh now we've all had a break from netball."

Netball New Zealand has swung open the doors to the public for the next two games at the Allan Brewster Stadium in Papatoetoe.

The Ferns leave for Cape Town on Friday.