KEY POINTS:
At the Netball New Zealand offices, we are examining a collection of hideous sporting trophies and wondering aloud why they are so peculiar.
The new head of Netball NZ bounces in and says, yes, they are odd, and "anything that's got a ball in it gets really phallic, doesn't it? So you have to be quite careful."
Then Raelene Castle stops herself and says, "That's probably not the right thing to say at the beginning of an interview, is it?"
Oh, I don't know. I will end up wishing she'd said more things like that, or anything really that wasn't marketing speak, at which she is so good she sounds as though she has swallowed whole textbooks on the subject.
She probably has.
And she has absorbed, by that peculiarly New Zealand sort of osmosis, the sport talk, too, from having spent hours of her childhood sitting on couches at 3am with a cup of tea and a gingernut to watch sport, any sport, with her dad.
And from having spent her childhood Saturday mornings at Carlaw Park where her dad, Bruce, the former Kiwis captain, coached, and her mum, Marlene, world champion bowler, took down the statistics.
She never rebelled as an adolescent against the sporting life; she was too busy playing it.
And, as an ambitious businesswoman, she will get up at 3am to watch sport on the telly and then off to work she goes, bright as a button.
She says her family (there's a younger brother, Ryan, who does ironman and whose idea of fun is a four-hour bike ride) are all shout-at-the-TV types.
"So it did occur to me that I might have to be a little bit more reserved. I think it's going to be quite a struggle."
She can't be on the sideline leaping up and down and abusing the Aussies. "I'm going to have to sit on my hands."
Castle thinks she might have to have training in that: the art of the po-face perfected by so many sport nuts who also happen to be the coach/manager/CEO. I don't think she'll need it.
She takes up this job in June after she leaves her head of business marketing job at Telecom and she is, despite attempting to put on her serious, sensible, chief executive face, the cat who got the cream.
She says she doesn't want to be seen to be showing off and she keeps saying that this is her "dream job" but that she knows that "sounds corny".
"Umm, I suppose New Zealanders aren't always that good at being honest about how they feel, and it does sound a little bit glib to be so excited about a job that you [are going to be] doing every day.
"But I mean it's absolutely true, it really is, it's not just any job. It's CEO of Netball New Zealand and it was the one job I'd looked at and thought if the timing comes right, I've got a really good opportunity there."
She likes to talk a lot about opportunities and opening doors and how she believes in being "master of your own destiny".
"I'm a great believer in that. You have to make sure you go and make it happen. You can't sit back and let it happen to you."
Castle is - and this is probably a prerequisite for the head of any sporting association - one of those people blessed with the sunny nature of the eternal optimist. She doesn't so much see silver linings in clouds; she doesn't see clouds.
She will sit on the board that makes decisions about coaches, which can include firing them. She's sacked people before.
"Yes, and it's difficult sometimes, but I think if you approach it well and do a good job the realisation of that person is that, actually, it's the right time for them to move on as well.
"I always try to be positive ... but it's about communicating and making sure you're open and honest with people. At the time they might not see it, but I think later on they respect you for that honesty."
This is an optimistic outlook.
"I'm very optimistic. It is a word people would used to describe me."
Castle describes her personality - the reason she studied marketing at the University of Auckland - as "being really positive and outward, focusing on the customer".
This sounds more like something out of one of those marketing manuals than a personality description.
"It probably is, but there are people who have more introverted personalities that like focusing on the internal workings of a business."
There is much more of this, but I think it can be assumed that she is not much interested in the introvert's pursuit of the internal workings of herself.
She played netball, of course, at rep level but says she was too short at 170cm and not quick enough to be good enough to make the national team.
But I bet she was scary on court. She is, and always has been, "horribly competitive" at everything, even board games. "It's got to be about winning."
She is also bossy as hell, at a guess. "My friends would probably say I'm bossy. I'd say I take the lead on things. If we go out for dinner, I'll tend to take the menu and get things ordered, otherwise we end up sitting around all night and no decisions get made."
But not a bossy boss. "I do have a saying: why have a dog and bark yourself?" I think this means she can delegate, although her dinner party friends might disagree.
I had her down as head girl, at Macleans College in Bucklands Beach. She wasn't, but that wasn't a bad guess either. It came down to her and another girl and Castle says she didn't get it because "I had very strong views, which is not that surprising, and they probably, umm, wanted someone with not quite such strong views".
She says she "doesn't want to go there". I do eventually drag her there, and it turns out it was because she refused to read the prayers because she doesn't believe in God. I'm still not sure why she was both so coy and so pig-headed about not telling me this. I think it makes her more likeable, but perhaps she's worried about the singing of the national anthem.
Getting things ordered at Netball NZ will involve, in part, making netball's wholesome image, well, what? Sexier?
"It's about making the players identifiable on a daily basis so people want them associated with their brands."
Is she going to turn them into so-called celebrities? "There is going to be a little bit of that. It's about getting them in the right place and being seen. I've had emails from people, you know, males, saying 'Can you make sure Anna Scarlett keeps getting selected?' Because, you know, from a male perspective, she is ... " Cute? Sexy? "Absolutely."
I can't help but wonder what that will mean for the not-so-cute ones, but she is not talking makeovers. "No, I don't think so. Ha. Well, the funny thing is, why I'm laughing is because the netball girls, when they go into the dressing rooms before a game, they actually take their hair [down] and makeup off and go and play netball. And the All Blacks go into the changing room and actually do their hair and makeup and then go out and play! It does amaze me somewhat."
Castle is much amused by this - she is much more amusing when she's not sitting on her hands - so you have to hope she doesn't follow up on training herself to always sit on them.
There's the real chance that the marketing side will win out, but it's not a sure thing.
When she was 7 she was sent home from school for fighting another girl who was picking on one of her friends. Did she bash her one?
"I literally did. I broke my little finger. The girl I was defending is still my best friend, and I told that story at her wedding. I said to her husband, 'If you mess with her, you're in big trouble'."
That's more like it. Now we know she's loyal, stroppy, stands up for what she believes in, won't be messed with.
If she told a few more stories like that one, and the one I almost had to bash her to tell, she'd have done a much better job of selling herself as what she undoubtedly really is: just the sort of sheila we need to take on those Aussies.