Netball: Silver Nicol shines

By DYLAN CLEAVER

When Yvonne Willering's new broom swept Lesley Nicol clean out of the Silver Ferns captaincy, she probably had no idea the favour she was doing the mid-courter.

Mind you, at the time, neither did Nicol.

It hurt, she will acknowledge now, but made her more balanced.

Seven years later, the balance of power has tilted back Nicol's way - as a caretaker-captain, mind.

Nicol is leading an Anna Rowberry-less Silver Ferns on their three-test tour of Australia which begins before what is expected to be a world record crowd of 14,000 on Saturday at Sydney's Superdome. Two spells in the big job is not bad for someone that never coveted the job. "It is a big honour," Nicol says on a break from her relief work as a doctor at an Auckland hospital, "but I've never aspired to be captain. I aspired to be a world champion netballer and to take my netball to another level, but I never felt that being a captain was something I really wanted to do."

Without ignoring the sheer volume of hard work Nicol has ploughed into her stellar 106-tests-and-counting career, there has been something serendipitous about its progress on and off the court.

As a 21-year-old relative novice she was thrust into the captaincy by Leigh Gibbs, as a 23-year-old she was thrust out of that job and into a field which has played a defining role in her life as netball.

"In the end, when I was dropped as captain, it was one of the best things that could have happened to me," Nicol says.

"I re-prioritised and decided I'd go back and do medicine. So looking back, having had that opportunity [to lead] and then having it taken away, it just seemed to open everything up for me." There was a common perception back then that the ever-smiling, softly spoken Nicol might not be flinty enough to lead.

But looks can be deceiving.

"No New Zealand captain had been dropped and gone on to keep playing for New Zealand so it looked pretty ominous. It probably made me all the more determined."

It was a very tough time.

"Up to that point I would have done anything for netball. I would have sacrificed everything. But that changed me and made me a more balanced person too.

"It was quite ironic that a year later I was made vice-captain under Yvonne." Not that she would have said so then - controversy and Nicol go together like a fool and money.

"When I look back I was so young. I'm pleased I had that opportunity in terms of the things that I learnt, but I know now I'd do everything differently the way I interact with people - I'm quite an intense person anyway, but I'm probably a bit more relaxed now than I was then."

A balanced life has kept Nicol in the game while others have been and gone. She is relieving as a second-year house surgeon in Auckland after moving from Southland two months ago (Nicol will return south temporarily in the new year to play for the Southern Sting again).

So far, the grief about moving to the big city has been minimal.

"They [friends] haven't said much but they did give me a book The Way of the Jafa. It's a way of surviving Auckland and Aucklanders. It's quite good."

"I'm enjoying it, but miss my friends down south.

"I grew up in the country so I'm used to the wide open spaces. My partner [Chris Rumball, also a doctor] is here and long-term career wise it's going to be good to have some contacts.

"You just have to be more organised to do outdoorsy things like kayaking or mountainbiking than I had to be down south."

Nicol acknowledges it will get harder to combine international netball and a specialist career in medicine, but for the moment she's enticed by the glitter of gold. Two silver medals at the Commonwealth Games have made her more determined to put that right in front of the Australians' home crowd in Melbourne 2006.

Nicol says she's always been a fiercely determined goal-setter, even before "we were told you were meant to", but there's a more fundamental reason why, at 31, she has no plans to quit.

"I know this sounds a bit clichéd, but it's just my love of the game. I feel I'm still learning the game. Every game I play leaves me with something I want to improve on. So that passion's still there and I'd decided when that passion had gone I'd stop.

"I think winning at the world champs renewed that passion. You'd kind of think you'd reached your plateau and that was it, but it gave me even more desire."

Nicol is widely regarded as the best wing defence in the world, but to non-netball purists it remains a mysterious position.

"I guess the overall role is to get the ball, but you do a lot of work helping set up your inner-circle defence or to slow the ball so they have a chance to come out and take intercepts.

"If you haven't got a good wing defence-centre combination working outside the circle it makes it a lot harder for the circle defence to look good.

"I guess everything you're working towards is getting turnover ball." Nicol has worn pretty much every bib you can on a netball court. She was a goal attack up until her senior high school years although "you wouldn't know now". At provincial level with Southland country she played goal defence and goal keep.

She remained a defensive player when she first went to Otago, before shifting into the midcourt.

Goal shoot is the one position she can't put on her resume and, she says, "they wouldn't let me anywhere near goal attack now. I'm a defensive player at heart."

In Australia, her analytical ability will be pivotal to the Silver Ferns chances of winning.

But then, it's been like that for more than 100 tests now - captain or not.