Silver Ferns coach Waimarama Taumaunu has released her players back to their transtasman league teams knowing the odds are not all of them will get through the season unscathed.
With just a month between the ANZ Championship final and the start of the Commonwealth Games, Taumaunu needed to get ahead start on their preparations for the tournament, squeezing in a tour to Britain this month.
The Ferns returned home yesterday thoroughly satisfied with what they managed to achieve on the whirlwind excursion, which included test wins over Jamaica and England.
Although they played only two test matches, the New Zealand side took a big step forward on the tour in terms of developing their options and variety. Taumaunu ran two completely different attacking lines in each half against Jamaica, while a new-look frontline of Cathrine Latu and Jodi Brown had a rare 60-minute outing in the Ferns' 17-goal win over a disappointing England side.
They weren't able to rotate their defensive lines, with injured captain Casey Kopua, new mother Anna Harrison and - depending on how her rehabilitation from a knee reconstruction progresses - Kayla Cullen still to return to the fray, but Taumaunu will still be comfortable with her options at the back.
It could make for some difficult decisions down the track when it comes to selecting the final 12 for the Commonwealths, but Taumaunu will be delighted if she finds herself in such a predicament as she knows she can't bank on having a full complement of players available.
"It's great that we have some depth because frankly we've had so many injuries come out of ANZ in the past, without some depth we leave ourselves open to issues. Having that depth also adds real competition for places and the ability to change the style we're playing simply by changing personnel," she said.
Given the tight turnaround between the transtasman league and Games, there is no room for trials this year. Taumaunu hopes to leave it until the end of the ANZ Championship regular season before naming the final 12 for the tournament, but she may be forced to select the team sooner if the NZOC is not willing to budge on its selection deadlines.
"In some ways this tour was a trial for us, there were a lot of rotations and the exhibition games against Scotland gave us the opportunity to look at some of those players in the wider squad," Taumaunu said.
The Ferns will train together in "regional clusters" in four camps during the ANZ season, before they assemble just two weeks out from the Commonwealth Games.
The truncated nature of their build-up is a problem the Ferns and Australia will once again encounter next year before the World Cup in Sydney.
With the International Netball Federation unwilling to budge on the August timing of the tournament, ANZ Championship organisers are forced to move the season forward to allow the respective national teams enough time to prepare for the pinnacle events.
The 2018 Commonwealth Games, scheduled to be held in April, will create even further headaches for league bosses as they try to ensure the integrity of the competition is not devalued every third and fourth year.
To avoid such clashes, ANZ Championship officials have been exploring the possibility of moving the league to summer from 2018.
The move could make sense from a broadcasting perspective, but it is understood other stakeholders aren't as enthusiastic about the idea and the feeling is it is unlikely to happen on a permanent basis.
