Netball: Selection style yet another difference

Norma Plummer. Photo / Martin Sykes

Outspoken Australian netball coach Norma Plummer says Ruth Aitken is selecting her Silver Ferns team the wrong way.

Welcome to Ruth versus Norma, series eight. Battle commences next Sunday but that doesn't mean a few arrows can't be fired now.

Plummer questions Aitken's decision to select her final 2010 squad for the Commonwealth Games based on a few days of trials. Plummer has taken an extended group of 15 through the three-test series with Jamaica and will not choose her 12 until after the test against New Zealand on Sunday.

"It is too risky to pick from a two-day camp," she says.

"If I had picked the team then, I might have picked the wrong 12. That would all be based on what they did during the ANZ Championship season but you still have to be able to come into the national programme and work in all the different combinations - and I want all players to be given that opportunity."

Plummer feels performance in the ANZ Championship remains the main measuring stick but is not the be-all and end-all.

"We have five different coaches and five different teams in the ANZ Championship and I coach differently. [The players] then have to come in and think about what style of game I want to play."

Plummer named her initial 15-player squad on July 26.

The Diamonds coach justifies her five weeks of experimenting, testing and fine-tuning by pointing out that, unlike the previous campaigns, this time around she doesn't have the "luxury" of a week-long training camp so she is is doing it "on the road".

"I'm saying, 'you want to get picked, this is your opportunity to put it out there'."

In contrast, Aitken named her final Commonwealth Games squad on July 30, cutting Anna Thompson, Wendy Frew and Charlotte Kight from the mix after a two-and-a-half-day selection camp.

Why didn't the veteran Ferns mentor take the opportunity to blood some youngsters in the Jamaica series?

"We have been in team-building mode rather than team-selection mode and it remains to be seen who is the most effective," explains Aitken.

"We felt our team works best once we are actually committed as a team together and building as a combination going forward."

Aitken says her priority in the five tests against Jamaica and Australia was to give court time to those definitely in the mix for Delhi, rather than spend that time selecting the 10, 11 and 12 positions in the squad.

The Ferns coach says they also learned a lot from the 10-day training camp back in January on the Gold Coast and knew enough about any new prospects.

"We felt we had enough knowledge to pick our team and there was no risk."

The candid Plummer disagrees but admits there is a downside to her more drawn-out process.

"I might have made a rod for my back," she jokes. "It is getting tougher and tougher and you are dealing with athletes' lives and don't want to hurt them. Three kids will miss out and that will be damned sad - but it would have been the same earlier and they wouldn't have had the chance to play test matches.

"You could get burnt if you didn't cover your bases. You need to see the different combinations.

"For example, [young defender] Amy Steel has really stood up.

"She might have been a player that, in the past, we would have cut and she might have been the prime player by the time the Commonwealth Games comes around."