KEY POINTS:
It's hard to find a netballer more effervescent than Silver Fern shooter Maria Tutaia. So it's hard to picture her as a timid schoolgirl who couldn't breathe when she met one of her netball heroes.
Yesterday Tutaia happily chatted with two little fans, 5-year-olds Makayla Jolly and Grace
Eden, at a Silver Ferns breakfast to wish the team luck in their defence of the world title, starting on Saturday. But had she been in their shoes 15 years ago, she wouldn't have been able to eat a bite.
Tutaia was speechless the day she first met a Silver Fern at the age of 13, when New Zealand defender Linda Vagana, now Samoan coach, came to her team prize-giving.
"I felt like I was in a capsule, that there was no oxygen, I was so excited," she recalls. "There was a real live Silver Fern, and I wanted to ask her so many questions."
And the pearls of wisdom she took from that meeting? "None. I couldn't breathe let alone speak."
The little girls had no trouble sharing their netball experiences with Tutaia - they play for the Pinehurst School 5-year-olds side; Tutaia didn't start playing until she was 8.
Yesterday's traditional hotel cooked breakfast was a break from the meticulous diet the Ferns are on this week. A few scraped their plates clean, but most politely dodged the hash brown and bangers and ate only the eggs and fruit.
The Ferns take the nutritional side of their campaign very seriously - and plan to eat every three hours over the next 10 days. Not wanting to disclose their nutrition secrets to the opposition, they described their diet as "wholegrain carbohydrates, high quality protein and essential fats, combined with a good intake of fresh fruit and vegetables."
The menu, and the hospitality, have changed since New Zealand played at the first world championships in England in 1963. At that tournament, the New Zealand players had to do it themselves, cooking up a traditional Kiwi meal for 200 - tinned tomato soup, roast lamb and kumara, and pavlova, all served in flax baskets.
After dining out on the inspirational words of Warriors captain and Australian Steve Price (who said Australian netball captain Liz Ellis was one of his heroes), Silver Ferns coach Ruth Aitken revealed the three key elements the team had fine-tuned over the past three months.
The first was resilience - building a strong work ethic and an ability to "keep on keeping on". The second, connections on and off the court - "the confidence in knowing each other so well and trusting each other implicitly. And the strong links to family and partners who understand the sacrifices we've made," she said.
The third was wairua, or spirit - the desire to keep growing as a team.
"When you have all three in harmony," Aitken said, "you have a Silver Ferns team ready to take on the rest of the world."
