KEY POINTS:
Yvonne Willering's biggest test in her three months at the helm of the new Northern Mystics franchise has been to her patience.
It seems being a coach without a team is tough work.
But the end is now in sight with the franchises for this year's inaugural transtasman
league finally able to start contracting players.
Although discussions have continued over the holiday period, an agreement reached just before Christmas did not allow the franchises to formally start signing players until today.
Franchises will now begin meeting the players and most of the New Zealand teams expect to have their line-ups finalised within the next couple of weeks.
Willering admits she is not exactly sure how long the contracting will take, but is taking heart from the fact the teams must submit their line-ups to the league office by January 31.
"It's just nice to see an end point really.
"The difficulty has been with every week that went past we kept thinking maybe we can contract next week, or the week after. But now at least we've got a date so we can work to set dates, and as a coach that's what I was asking for right from the start."
Mystics chief executive Mark Cameron said the franchise had meetings scheduled with up to five players today.
Until this point Cameron has only been able to speak in loose terms with the players and he hopes to be able to formalise the agreements as quickly as possible.
Cameron said the franchise would name only 11 players initially, which would include one ineligible player, and would make a further application to Netball New Zealand to sign a second ineligible player.
The agreed eligibility rule means each team may have one New Zealand citizen not eligible to play for the Silver Ferns but franchises can apply to Netball New Zealand to approve a second ineligible or import player.
A number of players, including midcourt star Temepara George, have signalled their intent to play for the Auckland franchise.
But Willering will not be totally comfortable until the players officially put pen to paper.
"It's now just a question of getting player's signatures and I think a lot of us coaches have said until we get names on paper we're not going to be satisfied."
In theory, players will be contracted from January 15, meaning the teams are free to start training next week. And Willering doesn't plan on wasting any more time - she has scheduled her first session for that day.
"I've been a coach without a team for long enough really.
"Realistically you've got three months in which to prepare a team and you really want to have that team ready by about mid-March so that you're only finetuning for those last few weeks."
