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It will be at least 10 months before the dethroned Silver Ferns reassemble to begin their crusade to regain the world crown in 2011.
And it may be a very similar team who regroup, working towards their next defence of the Commonwealth Games title. None of the 12
Ferns players have indicated they will retire after losing their world champions' status to Australia on Saturday.
The lure of next year's inaugural professional league, the transtasman ANZ championship, is keeping those in the twilight of their careers, the likes of Irene van Dyk, Adine Wilson and Julie Seymour, intent on playing.
It's unlikely the Silver Ferns will play as a team again until next August because of the intensity of the 69-match league, which runs from April to July. No tests have yet been confirmed for 2008, bar the annual New Zealand-Australia encounter for the Fisher & Paykel Cup. Both New Zealand and Australia will use the transtasman region-versus-state competition as a basis for selecting their national squads, looking ahead to the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
In the meantime, a debrief on the Silver Ferns' world championship performance in the next few weeks may determine whether Ferns coaches Ruth Aitken and Leigh Gibbs stay on in the job. Both coaches are contracted through to March next year, and Aitken, the head coach since 2001, said she would make a decision in the New Year on whether she wanted to continue.
"I'm a very simple person, and I keep one focus at a time. This was my focus and, yeah, we need to go back and look at things," Aitken said after the Ferns' 42-38 loss on Saturday night.
The Ferns spent yesterday afternoon at a team barbecue south of Auckland. Although they were still upset by the final loss, they were in better spirits than the devastation of the previous night, shooter Irene van Dyk said.
"We couldn't have done anything better than we did," she said.
The Ferns surged and fell through the entire 60 minutes and after pulling back from seven goals down at halftime to win the third quarter, had the chance to draw level in the final minutes. But in a hugely defensive game, the Ferns' harried attack time and again could not break through Australia's cloying defence.
"I thought we put ourselves in a position in that last quarter where we could have taken that game, they had worked so hard to get back into it," Aitken said. "The fact it didn't happen showed the resilience of Australia."
The Australian shooters were put off their game by outstanding defence from Casey Williams and Sheryl Scanlan, forcing Australian coach Norma Plummer to rotate her goal scorers. Although they succeeded with only 42 of their 60 shots, they had the lion's share of possession through dominating the midcourt.
Aitken was thrilled with the efforts of 22-year-old Williams, the Ferns' most compelling player.
"She's an amazing talent and I think she will just grow from this experience. "
