Stories of sacrifice show passion of those chasing World Cup bibs

The very presence of Silver Ferns veteran Casey Kopua at the trials for the World Cup this week is a triumph of determination over horrific injury. Photo / Greg Bowker

The next few days loom as pivotal in the careers of many Silver Ferns.

Come Thursday, when Waimarama Taumaunu names her line-up for the Netball World Cup in Sydney, there will be big winners and losers among the 30 players who have been invited to trial for a spot in the 12-strong team.

For some of those trialing this week, we may have seen the last of them in the black dress.

But before the story becomes that of selection delight and dejection, we should note the stories of sacrifice just to make it to this week's trials.

Stories like livewire midcourter Liana Leota, who has been living on the other side of the world to her family while she chases her World Cup dream. Leota left behind her rugby-playing husband Johnny and their three children, including 1-year-old daughter Karney, in Britain this year to return to New Zealand and focus on making the Ferns team for the August tournament, which, if she makes the cut, will likely be her international swansong.

Then there's Camilla Lees. With a stop-start international career to date, Lees has taken a year away from her "day job" as a doctor in Wellington and moved back home to Auckland so she could dedicate all her energies to making her first World Cup.

Or Cathrine Latu, who, after representing Samoa as a youngster, served a four-year stand-down from international netball so she could play for the Silver Ferns. But she is yet to pull on the black dress at a World Cup. Netball NZ went all the way to world sport's top judicial body to try to get her in the team for the 2011 World Cup but the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected their bid.

And then there's Casey Kopua, whose very presence at this week's trials is a triumph of determination. It was no certainty Kopua would even get back on court this season, let alone be in any position to challenge for a place in the World Cup side after suffering a horrific knee injury in last year's Constellation Cup series.

A week after having surgery to reattach her patella tendon to her kneecap, Silver Ferns physiotherapist Sharon Kearney visited the star defender at her Hamilton home to map out Kopua's rehabilitation plan. But first she asked the broken-down Ferns skipper an important question: "Do you even want to play again?"

It was an understandable question. Over her brilliant career Kopua has endured a string of frustrating injury setbacks. Even at 20, when she made her Silver Ferns debut, there were concerns over Kopua's "dodgy knees". Then there are her ankles.

Weakened by years playing netball at top speed, both have needed

clear-outs to remove rogue cartilage.

So when Kopua crashed to the floor screaming and clutching her knee in the third test of an already disastrous Constellation Cup series against Australia in October last year, many wondered if that might be the last act of the outrageously talented defender's international career. Kopua wasn't one of those people. She didn't hesitate when Kearney posed that difficult question - "I said yes, definitely I'm not giving up, I want to be at the World Cup," the star defender recalled last month in the lead-up to her first ANZ Championship appearance for the Magic this season.

That sentiment will be shared by Kopua's fellow trialists this week. They all want to be at the World Cup. Only 12 will be, but there'll be many more whose sacrifice and endeavour makes them deserving of inclusion.

And that's why sometimes sport sucks.