Chris Rattue: When this plummer's about, we're always in hot water

Hats off here to Norma Plummer, Australia's "battle-axe" netball coach. Not since the days of John Dybvig - the Yankee basketball coach who would break just about anything courtside if he thought it would get a headline - has a hoop game had such a good PR sport in this part of the world. In all honesty, netball could do with it.

As a former netball non-believer, I am surprised to find myself delighting that this year's National Bank Cup delivered the best netball action I've witnessed. Compulsive even.

The final, although lopsided, contained dazzling and fast-paced skills unimaginable in the game a few years ago. And the Silver Ferns are carrying on with the job.

I still have a major problem with those inflatable pretzels that netball fans insist on whacking together at matches, apparently to prove that they are having a good time. They are far too North-Korean-political-rally-like for my liking.

But this year's on-court action has turned at least one sceptic into a netball watcher.

Maybe it is advancing years which make the speed and dexterity of increasingly-remote generations appear so fantastic, but netball seemed to take a major leap forwards as a spectacle this season.

Yet netball also needs more personality, and Plummer scrubs up in that department.

Like many top male coaches, she apparently sees conspiracy everywhere. And in the great sporting tradition of the American baseball legend Yogi Berra, she can mangle language and meaning as beautifully as anyone, although no one has ever done it with the style and insight of Berra.

This week saw a revisiting of Plummer's previous claims that New Zealand infiltrated the Australian Institute of Sport and "pilfered physiological information" as one story put it.

Presumably, Ruth Aitken and company found out that Liz Ellis is 1.83 metres and can run pretty quick.

According to Plummer, these spying missions have, over a number of years, been led by Kiwi PhD students who, heavily disguised as Kiwi PhD students, enrolled for training at the Australian Institute of Sport.

Very tricky.

The prime exhibit in Plummer's remarkably short list of evidence is a quip Silver Fern coach Aitken made to Plummer before a match in 2004.

But wait. There's more. Plummer also inferred that the Australian men's basketball team have fallen foul of similar dastardly deeds.

The thought of Pero Cameron tip-toeing around the academy halls at midnight picking locks doesn't bear thinking about, unless there happened to be a burger bar in there somewhere.

For good measure, we're a rough-house netball mob who can happily break the rules because we've hijacked the umpiring department as well, according to Norma.

An Australian sports coach in the death throes perhaps, throwing as many curve balls as possible. It's certainly added heat to the test series.

Anyway, it's all good fun, and as has been pointed out, Plummer operates in a tough sports world dominated by four Australian football codes, where every piece of publicity for netball is precious. She gets more publicity than most, although in this case she looks unlikely to have the last laugh.

You suspect that, like her rough-diamond rugby counterpart John Connolly, a fairly warm heart beats underneath.

As netball the sport takes off in leaps and bounds, Plummer's eccentricities add a spicy icing to that cake. Long may she complain.