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Waikato/Bay of Plenty Magic coach Noeline Taurua will be weighing up her options when the side takes the court in this weekend's pre-season tournament in Sydney.
The Magic's build-up to the 2009 ANZ Championship kicks into high gear tomorrow with their first competitive hit-out of the year at the Sydney Olympic Park pre-season tournament. All five Australian franchises are taking part, while the Magic and the Southern Steel are the only New Zealand sides to be making the trip across the Tasman for the warm-up matches.
The winner of the tournament is set to take home $10,000, but it is not the giant novelty cheque Taurua is after.
With just a month to go before the start of the season, Taurua plans to use the matches to test out different combinations, and she hopes her fringe players will step up and make the most of the opportunity. The Magic coach said the tournament would give her a firmer idea of which combinations were genuine options this season.
She generally stuck to the same starting seven for most of last season and had limited options to go to on the bench.
But the Magic have added a great deal of depth to their squad in the off-season, particularly in the defensive end with the controversial signing of Leana de Bruin. The addition of one-time Silver Fern Jessica Tuki, who plays in the shooting circle and the midcourt, also allows Taurua to mix it up in the attack end.
But just how much Taurua can afford to mix it up will become clearer after the weekend.
One of the range of new-look combinations Taurua is likely to test out will involve the relocation of star defender Casey Williams to goal-defence.
While Williams has made a name for herself in recent times as a goal-keep, Taurua is quick to stamp out any talk of the shift being an experiment. The former Ferns shooter points out Williams has had experience at international level at goal-defence.
After Irene van Dyk's much-maligned move to goal-attack late last season, experiment has become a dirty word in New Zealand netball.
"We won't be experimenting, but definitely we want to get more combinations out there this season. That was part of our recruitment plan right at the beginning was having more genuine options available to us, so that we can change the feel out on court."
Former Southern Steel shooter Megan Dehn has withdrawn from the Queensland Firebirds line-up for this season citing work commitments. The Firebirds will have to look within Australia for a replacement as they already have two imports in Jamaican shooter Romelda Aiken and England's Tamsin Greenway.
The Melbourne Vixens have also suffered a major setback a month out from the start of the transtasman league, losing midcourter Wendy Jacobsen to a season-ending knee injury.
