Netball: Silver Ferns vice-captain Katrina Grant reveals how previous regime fell short

Katrina Grant. Photo / Photosport.nz

Silver Ferns vice-captain Katrina Grant is singing the praises of the changes implemented by new coach Noeline Taurua as the Ferns try to fight their way back to the top of international netball.

In doing so, though, she may have further revealed just how wayward the Ferns had become under Janine Southby's leadership.

"It's been great," Grant says of the start of the Taurua tenure. "I've loved every minute of it.

"Noels has brought in a whole lot of different ideas and I think you can see that every game we played in the Quad Series, we got better."

She's right - after a record loss to England to kick off the Quad Series, the Ferns smashed South Africa and had a somewhat respectable 60-55 defeat to Australia. So what pieces of genius has Taurua implemented to kick-start the turnaround?

Well, that's where things get interesting. When asked about the key differences between Southby's tenure and the start of Taurua's reign, Grant reels off "very simple" changes - items you would have assumed to be already implemented in an international netball environment.

"Understanding what our role is - what we're going into training and doing, what we're working on, and having meetings and game plans on what exactly we need to work on to go forward," pinpointed Grant to Radio Sport's D'Arcy Waldegrave.

Read between the lines, and the inference is that such simple measures were an issue under Southby's reign, and Grant describes the new environment with such vigour that you get an underlying sense of how bad things may have been before.

Much of that was played out in Netball New Zealand's review into the Ferns' Commonwealth Games performance, which found Southby's player-led culture had caused a disconnect, with the young squad needing a more hands-on coaching approach during trainings.

That is where the biggest changes have been made, according to Grant.

"I really enjoy trainings, they're different, they're intense. We're training to play to win. So if we're not hard on each other at training, then you're not going to survive in the international arena these days.

"[Taurua] asks a lot of us - to be brutal on each other in terms of wanting to make each other better and want to win. The intensity has risen in every training, and players want more from each other. That's something we didn't really have as much of in the past."

Despite optimism, there's still a need for patience as the Ferns build their way back. Australia are still heavy favourites in the Constellation Cup next month, despite being set to trial some young combinations, and Grant is preaching caution.

"It needs to start from scratch with new players and new management coming through. It's not going to happen overnight.

"Every day [in the Quad Series], we took a step forward, and going into the Constellation Cup, now's the time we have to pick up a win."

Hardly a lofty goal compared with the heights of yesteryear, but considering how low they sunk, it's a realistic marker for a team on the rise.