KEY POINTS:
Her voicemail message on her cellphone is direct and to the point. "Kia ora, this is Wai. Can you leave a message? Thanks, bye."
Waimarama Taumaunu makes no apology for not being able to take your call - she is one busy lady.
The newly named Silver Ferns
assistant coach works for the State Services Commission where she is a high flyer in the performance management branch.
She is now charged with the job of helping to whip the Silver Ferns back into shape.
Taumaunu has been blunt in her assessment of New Zealand's top netballers, expressing her concern with the overall skill level.
She believes some players on court in the ANZ Championship are not up to scratch, but the highly respected coach said New Zealand would gain a lot in terms of development from the transtasman competition.
"We're going to have to work on them and get them sorted so I think long-term this competition will really raise the level in New Zealand.
"Certainly I think all the players involved can see what the expectation is in terms of fitness, in terms of skill, and they're going to have to lift their play to meet that," she said.
But Taumaunu believes the lack of depth in the midcourt area is a particular concern for the Silver Ferns and must be addressed immediately.
She said one of her main priorities this year will be getting the midcourt up to scratch.
"I was keen for us to put quite a bit of emphasis on the midcourt, I think that's an area where there does seem to be some distance between ourselves and the Australians in the ANZ competition, particularly with recent retirements as much as anything, and I think we need to do some real ground work in there."
But Taumaunu is also bound to have a strong influence on the defensive end.
A staunch and intimidating defender in her day, Taumaunu was a world-class goal defence and an inspiring and effective captain. She was in only her mid-teens when she entered representative netball for Canterbury and, by 1981, was in Lois Muir's New Zealand side.
She had several things going for her on the netball court - she was physically imposing, had a fine appreciation of strategy, excellent body control and an instinctive flair.
Taumaunu, who worked with the Ferns briefly as a defensive specialist in the lead-up to last year's World Champs, believes she can add a lot of value to the defence end, but she said she is also keen to have a lot of input in match analysis.
In her role as performance director with the England national side, which she held from 1998-2003, Taumaunu gained a great deal of experience in this area. Netball New Zealand chief executive Raelene Castle said it was Taumaunu's "profound analytical and strategic approach" that helped to win the approval of the panel. Roughly translated, she is one smart cookie.
But Taumaunu expects her methods of analysis may be slightly foreign to the players.
"Probably the thing that I am most interested in is the match analysis and individual feedback, that may be quite new to some of them but I think the players are fairly well-educated enough to know what to expect," Taumaunu said.
So what exactly can the players expect?
"Intimidating", "forthright" and "direct" are popular adjectives when asked to describe Taumaunu, but the one that cropped up with the most frequency was "staunch".
Does Taumaunu agree with that assessment?
"It's sort of an old-fashioned word now isn't it? I'm fairly direct and have high expectations and that's about as far as I would go in describing myself," she said.
It seems Taumaunu is likely to complement Ferns coach Ruth Aitken in a good-cop, bad-cop routine.
