KEY POINTS:
JAMAICA 2003
Temepara George's sending off was the make or break moment in the 2003 final, recalls the winning Silver Ferns captain Anna Stanley, who was Anna Rowberry then.
The New Zealand netballers broke a 16-year drought in Jamaica, beating Australia 49-47 in the final after being a player down for a two-goal penalty period.
George, the Silver Ferns' centre and player of the final, was dismissed during the final quarter for repeated infringements. Coaches Ruth Aitken and Leigh Gibbs had planned for that and many other possibilities but still, it was a rare event to deal with.
"It was a huge moment and unheard of in netball. I'd never struck it in a game although it became a bit of an in-thing after the world champs," says the 31-year-old Stanley.
"It was huge to lose one of our stars and centre, but it didn't ruffle any feathers and we didn't lose our pass off while she was off.
"We'd planned for all sorts of things, including what to do should the lights go off, which actually happened while Jamaica were playing Australia. The Jamaicans are pretty laid back people, a bit unpredictable, and we had to prepare for a few scenarios.
"Lesley [Nicol] went from wing defence to centre as planned but I was going 'oh my god, oh my god' and trying to take my bib off to go to centre. It's the pressure of the moment - you forget practical reasoning.
"The main thing is to stick to your job and not try and do a million and one things. We did that, Bubs [George] came back on, and we were away again."
The 2003 world champions had a few travelling supporters including Stanley's parents and a sister.
"It was quite special seeing the Kiwis in the crowd, thinking they had come all that way to support us," she says.
She remembers the Jamaicans as loud and friendly although the players were conscious of their security when leaving their motel.
Inevitably, Bob Marley music loomed large although the tournament song The World's Greatest by R. Kelly brings back fondest memories.
It has become a retrospective theme for team members, although their campaign motto was "if you want something you've never had, you've got to do something you've never done".
A Vilimaina Davu intercept sealed the win in the final and the ball ended up with Stanley at the last whistle.
"I threw it into the air and thought 'holy hell, we've won',"says Stanley, a Sky commentator for these world championships.
Next came the drug testing - an ordeal for the dehydrated Stanley and two teammates. Against the rules, they sent attendants for beer to help the process.
"I have such wonderful memories of the tournament," says Stanley, who lives in Tauranga with her husband Jeremy Stanley, the former All Black, and their one-year-old daughter Jaya.
Stanley was jogging/pram pushing when the Herald called.
She says: "I thought it might be quite hard when I retired but what I've learnt is that no one can ever take the memories away. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I did play netball and was a world champion. But I can look back and be really proud."
GLASGOW 1987
Brutally honest sports team meetings are all the rage these days, especially when the chips are down.
A ground-breaking New Zealand netball team meeting occurred in London 1987, during 10 days of preparation for the World Championships in Glasgow.
This was no rescue mission, more a fine tuning for an already fine machine.
The 1987 team stands as our greatest, legends virtually unchallenged as the best in the world, many of them driven by defeat against Australia in the 1983 tournament final.
The squad was coached by Lois Muir and included captain Leigh Gibbs, Tracey Fear, Margaret Forsyth, Sandra Edge, Margharet Matenga, Waimarama Taumaunu, Rita Fatialofa, Julie Townsend and Tracey Earl. Enough said, although New Zealand had a rocky 1986, losing five of six games to Australia.
Fear, the lean defender of Australian origin who came to New Zealand in her late teens, readily recalls the London team showdown. Yet it cut so deeply she is still reluctant to provide specific details.
"We divulged our inner secrets, about what each of us found really difficult. You were really letting your innermost secrets to your team- mates," says Fear.
She and husband Terry live in Cambridge with their sports-mad kids, 17-year-old daughter Robbie and 15-year-old son Joel, who has represented New Zealand in BMX.
"I had this overwhelming sense of 'oh my God, it's hanging out there and woe betide us when we play in the domestic competition because we will all know our innermost secrets'.
"But it was a character-building moment. The hallmark of great teams is honesty that challenges each other. Only when the brutal facts are revealed can players make their games better."
Fear's technical weakness was against attackers' fakes, something her team-mates had already sussed. Beyond this revelation, she would say no more.
The 1987 team blitzed all-comers by at least 10 goals in the bleak Glasgow conditions and on strangely silent rubberised courts. Remarkably, they kept Australia's shooting aces to three goals in the third quarter of their clash, then pulled away from Trinidad and Tobago in the last final before moving indoors.
These great players propelled netball into a high-profile era. But the hallmarks of days gone by remained.
Rather than a grand return, Fear - netball's high performance manager these days - and other players travelled. The Fears and Leigh and Steve Gibbs went around Europe in a van. Various team members arranged meets in Paris and New York.
"The supporters in Glasgow really made it special for us but the sport was only just gaining a profile and there wasn't anything like the incredible reception for the 2003 team," says Fear.
But there was an unusual sequel, a 1997 Dunedin rematch against their Australian world championship adversaries.
Fear's ultra-competitive nature meant she had sworn never to play after her 1988 retirement. She trained like mad for the rematch.
"There was no way I wanted to lose. The game was fiercely competitive," she says.
"We looked anything but champions in the warm-up and we were concerned. It was very close but we won - Sandra Edge was spectacular.
"I have fantastic memories of 1987. People say it was a team of legends, but you only appreciate the value of the players afterwards."
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO 1979
Yvonne Willering surveys the setting for the 2007 world netball championships and gets quickly into her stride.
"England might not even get to play the Silver Ferns in this tournament which is sad," she says, sitting in the Waitakere Trusts Stadium stands.
"I like the idea of all the top countries playing each other. Maybe they need a two-tier tournament."
It's a typically forthright statement from Willering, delivered with her fondness for the game which has been central to her life and made her a world champion in 1979.
That Lois Muir-coached side shared the title with Australia and hosts Trinidad and Tobago. There was no final - the 19 teams played initially in groups with the top sides then fighting it out in a round robin.
Willering is well placed to compare netball now and then.
She was a medical microbiologist in 1979 but on returning home was soon working for Netball New Zealand.
The great defender went on to become a great coach. Her CV includes four years in charge of the Silver Ferns and involvement with numerous international teams, and she is preparing for her latest club assignment with Auckland in the fledgling transtasman league.
"The world championships are far more of an event now and the pressures are different. We were still playing for the pride of the country but we didn't have the following you have now. Success means the Silver Ferns are under far more pressure now, as they are finding out," says Willering.
Thirty years ago, there were few training camps, players were amateur, tours might involve a host of non-test matches, and there weren't even regular substitutions.
There was also a greater emphasis on the different national styles. Willering believes the emphasis on winning has made the game more uniform and physical.
Not that there wasn't the odd incident in days past.
Against Trinidad and Tobago, Willering sent the legendary Jean Pierre - "the dancing queen" - sprawling. Pierre, her country's sports minister before her death from cancer in 2002, was a superstar in her country.
"It was an accident but she milked it. The whole crowd went quiet, fearing she was badly injured. I blamed it on my goalkeeper Millie Munro," says Willering, with a grin.
"We had to be escorted by police out of the stadium after that. The crowd didn't take kindly to losing and we were jeered and spat on.
"The crowd was more interested in a national cause than the netball. It was just wonderful - to face that and come through it as a team."
It was a tournament of eccentricities which began with players being splattered by pigeons released at the opening ceremony.
Willering recalls giant moths interrupting night games on the outdoor courts. The New Zealanders were actually cheered to victory over the hosts by arch rivals Australia, a result which gave the Aussies a share of the title. And there was jostling for position among the three title winners as they crammed between a row of flags to collect their medals. That was followed by a coin toss to decide who kept the trophy first.
Willering says: "It hasn't quite got the same ring to it when you say joint world champions ... but it was still great to know that we won."
PERTH 1967
Joan Harnett-Kindley was the original glamour girl of New Zealand netball, but there was far more to her than met the eye. Her aesthetics and athleticism led the sport into a new era.
When New Zealand claimed its first world netball title in Perth in 1967, Harnett - as she was then - turned the crucial match against Australia with her peerless shooting.
The Cantabrian, New Zealand's premier netballer, was the official player of the tournament, contested by eight teams in a round robin.
These were days when snippets of local netball tests might be squeezed in at half-time during the televising of club rugby, and Harnett says there was no coverage from Perth.
"Our win was very obscure and women got very little recognition in sport then. It was my passion to sort that out," she says.
The national team had to raise some of their own funds.
"Once we took our raffle tickets down to the Lyttelton wharves on pay day, all the pretty young girls in the team," she says.
"We picked up quite a bit of money that day from the wharfies. I had to keep an eye on the team, though, to ensure everything was A1."
Netball's amateur code didn't help and could, quite literally, shoot itself in the foot.
Footwear providers Skellerup wanted Harnett in television commercials. Netball said it was the whole team, or none at all. A shot of Harnett's unidentified shoe-clad foot was used instead.
"I should have written JH on my shoe. The rules were absolutely pathetic," she says.
"I was a pioneer and I had a bit of God-given luck (looks-wise). I could achieve things for netball because of that. I got netball extra recognition which I was very pleased about."
Harnett had been in the 1963 side which, after six weeks of boat travel, contested the first world tournament in England, where they lost by a point to Australia. A core of the 1967 team was spurred on by that loss.
They were fighting fit in Perth after a 10-day build-up in Christchurch, including sessions with a national rowing trainer.
One Perth report declared that Harnett's "five glorious goals in rapid succession" got New Zealand home by 40-34 after they trailed Australia by one going into the last quarter. Harnett says interceptions by team mates were the basis for victory.
The young Harnett was a bank worker who practised shooting in lunch breaks. She became a real estate operator, and now lives in Wanaka with her husband Don Kindley. Harnett-Kindly, 64, is out of the real estate business, but on the licensing board.
Tennis is her active sporting love, although netball remains her passion. She was reunited with 1967 team mates - all except Margaret Gardiner are alive - in Auckland this week.
"Perth was a great coming together of countries and people. I still correspond with players from the other teams," she says.
"It seems a long time ago, and yet I can see it all in my mind's eye. When you win a world championship for the first time, you never forget.
"That team was as good, if not better, than the 1987 team. If they had played each other, it would have been the best game of netball ever."
