Netball: Taurua's supermarket sweep

Noeline Taurua holds 9-month-old daughter Niwa during a Magic training session. Picture / Rotorua Daily Post

Magic coach Noeline Taurua was stopped by a fellow shopper in the supermarket this week. "You have a good team," the man told her. "But tell them to slow down."

Taurua will take this advice into tonight's game against the Sting - the team they trounced in last year's final.

The Magic have looked vulnerable lately but those who know the tough-talking Taurua say she is capable of turning things around. After all, her own career had plenty of ups and downs.

Taurua was born in Auckland. She spent her early life in Albany, where her father worked as a prison officer at Paremoremo.

The youngest of five children, Taurua remembers the siren, which sounded when prisoners escaped. "The big sirens would go off and all the fathers would take off to the prison. It was just how you grew up."

The family moved to Taupo where her father got a job as a probation officer when Taurua was 10.

At the time her passion was athletics; she specialised in the 100m, 200m and hurdles. "I only played netball to pass the time away. Then I got to an age where it is more appealing to play team sport."

One of the first teams she made was the Taupo-nui-a-Tia College D team. While she improved enough to make various age group teams, her career didn't really take off until after a two-year stint in London.

Living with her parents, who had moved to Wellington, she tried out for the club side PIC, which included Wai Taumaunu, Rita Fatialofa and Margaret Matenga. She missed out but filled the goal attack position the following year when Matenga retired.

"Here I was in a team with people I had always watched on TV. It was amazing."

She does admit to being petrified of Taumaunu, whose powerful presence terrifies most. "I think for the first five years I never spoke to her."

At Wellington she made the Young Internationals, a New Zealand development side, but couldn't push her way into the Silver Ferns. She cites a lack of fitness as her downfall. "That is the difference between being a player and a good player."

The turning point came when she was 25, had busted her knee and was pregnant.

"There I was in the off-season with my big stomach with my leg in a cast. I thought, 'I can finish netball, rear my child and not do anything or I can do something that I really want'. I always wanted to be a Silver Fern."

The following year she was called into the New Zealand team and made her debut against Australia and Kathryn Harby-Williams. "The first ball I got ricocheted off my head and went into the opposition's hands - so it was very memorable."

She stayed in the team for five years before injuring her other knee, which effectively ended her international career. She tried to get back in but failed, which resulted in a war of words with the coach at the time, Yvonne Willering.

"I have taken a lot of things like that, which happened in my playing career, into my coaching career. When I started coaching it was like 'shoot, sorry to all the coaches I have given grief to as a player'.

"As a player, a lot just revolved around me. As a coach, they have to see the whole environment - my whole thinking has changed."

Taurua's coaching career started with a club team in Te Puke. She moved to Bay of Plenty, and then as assistant to Ruth Aitken at the Magic.

"It was hard to not say 'God, what the hell are you doing? Take your bib off and give it to me, I can do it better'. It took a year to get rid of that want to get out there and save the world."

Taurua said her promotion to Magic coach in 2002, when Aitken was made Silver Ferns coach, came a little quicker than she had anticipated.

But five years on she says, the role has got easier, although she is constantly working on player management. "It doesn't come naturally to me," he said.

"I have to spend time talking to people individually and see what they are thinking and see how I can mould that into a team unit."

Already in her fourth year in the job (Nicole Dryden coached the Magic in 2004), Taurua believes her time is nearly up.

"We are starting to speak about next year but I am not too sure about the years after that. You have got to move on to let fresh ideas come in."

Taurua said the ultimate would be coaching the Silver Ferns against Australia in a final. But, knowing how time-consuming the job is, she would have to weigh up whether she could balance it with family life.

Taurua has four children, the youngest three under five.

The family moved to Rotorua seven years ago and live 15 minutes out of city towards the lakes.

Not that Taurua is really a water person "unless it is alcoholic, has bubbles in it and I can drink it".

Something she will hopefully be able to stock up on in her next trip to the supermarket provided all goes well in the coming weeks.

Noeline Taurua

Born: Auckland
Status: Partner Eddie, children Aania (13), Pia (4), Matauri (2), Niwa (10 months)
Career Coaching:
2002-03, 05-06: Magic coach
2000/05: NZ under-21 assistant coach.
2004: NZ A assistant coach
2000: Bay of Plenty
Playing:
1994-99: Silver Ferns
1998-00: Capital Shakers
2000: Waikato

Semifinals
Tonight: Southern Sting v Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic, Invercargill, 7.30pm, live TV One.
Sunday: Northern Force v Canterbury Flames, North Shore, 1pm, live TV One.