Online Only
Update: Dame Noeline Taurua has been reinstated as Silver Ferns coach with immediate effect, Netball NZ confirmed. It follows intensive negotiations after Dame Noeline was stood down in September.
The treatment of Silver Ferns coach Dame Noeline Taurua is a national sporting embarrassment. Netball NZ took a world-class coach and a brilliant, proven, tenacious and talented former player, someone who received one of the highest honours our country can bestow on anyone, and systematically fed her to the hungry wolves in full view of a confused public.
Like so many, I have sat back in total disbelief and watched this car crash unfold. Dame Noeline was stood down in September following an independent review which highlighted “significant issues” within the Silver Ferns environment.
That review came on the back of concerns taken to the NZ Netball Players’ Association by a few players. We don’t know exactly what their concerns are but there’s been talk about Dame Noeline’s leadership and communication style.
Mediation has solved nothing; Yvette McCausland-Durie is interim coach and now our politicians are weighing in. Minister for Sport and Recreation Mark Mitchell wants it sorted as soon as possible while Labour MP Willie Jackson wants Netball NZ’s funding frozen (it receives around $3m each year, most from High Performance Sport NZ).
Jackson says his defence of Dame Noeline is about fairness, but I point out that she’s the daughter of the late Kingi Taurua, who was kaumātua at Ngā Whare Waatea Marae in Māngere for more than a decade. Jackson is chair of the marae; he and Kingi, a Vietnam vet, were friends. So maybe, Jackson’s playing the role of a cheesed-off uncle but he’s right about this not being fair.
For me, it raises questions about what it takes to play sport at an elite level and the support coaches can expect from administrators. Right now, it looks like the words of a few unproven precious pups – perhaps struggling with the demands, pace and skills needed at this elite level, who decided they didn’t like Dame Noeline demanding excellence or how she communicated her line in the sand – have been taken as read.
This generation wants the glory but not the grind. Dame Noeline is old-school. She believes in discipline, accountability and standards. She tells the truth – not what’s trending on TikTok. So what happens? The players turn on her, and the suits upstairs panic.
This country used to admire tough coaches. We used to celebrate winners. Now we eat them alive the minute feelings get hurt. Dame Noeline took us from fourth-place embarrassment to world champions in under a year in 2019. She could well be the greatest netball mind this country has ever produced. And how do we thank her? By allowing a clique of soft egos and bureaucrats to push her out the door. Disgraceful.
If you’re offended by this column, good. That’s the problem. Too many people in power care more about being liked than being great. Dame Noeline didn’t play that game.
It’s cost us two test matches against the Aussies and could well end up costing Netball NZ a world-class coach. I can’t see her returning. I mean, would you? Sport at this level costs plenty; sponsors are sensitive to this sort of public-facing mess and bums on seats start to drop off when a team loses back-to-back.
Players are divided. Their hearts are being worn not just on their sleeves but scribbled on their wrists, N.T. You can’t miss it. At least one player has openly asking N.T. to return to the team. Her accusers look on, muttering under their breath. Meanwhile the Aussies have won two Constellation Cup games by wide margins. Happy teams are winners; divided teams don’t win championships.
Dame Noeline has been there, done that and that’s to be respected, not questioned by “new kids on the block” who, if you ask me, have been mollycoddled at home, never failed NCEA because everyone passes. They should have been shown the door rather than given the time of day.
The administrators had a Ferrari of a coach in the garage but then drove it into the ditch. The disloyalty shown to her is, in my opinion, an insult on an industrial scale. The people who she needed to back her folded like wet cardboard; they were a shiver looking for a spine to crawl up.
Maybe a full review will expose the cowards who collapsed at the feet of a few players. This goes to the very heart of why New Zealand as a nation is currently losing. We’ve gone soft; we’re not preparing winners. How did the Penrith Panthers win four National Rugby League premierships? By working harder on every aspect of the game, on fitness, on conditioning, on game execution and on culture.
Back in the day, did the All Blacks send Christmas cards to coach Grizz Wyllie? No, but they respected the gruff, tough old bugger, he was there for keeps. As was Laurie Mains, Graham Henry and Steve Hansen. All those men knew about loyalty.
John Mitchell was once described as the toughest rugby player of his generation, and he became an All Black coach not to be messed with. Mitchell wasn’t popular. He and Christian Cullen – the world’s greatest-ever fullback – fell out and the coach won that round because coaches have to. At 27, Cully was an ex-All Black on Mitchell’s scrapheap.
Coaches set the tone, run the ship and there’s a line you don’t cross; Taurua’s line was undermined by those who she should have been able to rely on. Netball NZ needed to publicly back her from the start. To not back the coach is an unforgivable sin. That these administrators folded so quickly tells me they are in the wrong job.
Netball New Zealand should front up. Apologise. And those responsible should hand in their swipe cards and head for the exit.
Dame Noeline Taurua deserved better.
