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They struggled winless through 2008 and now the hapless Central Pulse have been shown just how grim things could become in 2009, by a team of young Australian netballers.
The troubled Pulse franchise suffered a major blow to their competitive credibility yesterday, when a development team from the Australian Institute of Sport beat them in their opening pre-season match in Queenstown.
The Wellington-based side failed to register a win in the inaugural season of the transtasman league, and on the basis of yesterday's 51-44 defeat against the AIS side, which is made up of under-21 players, the Pulse look unlikely to fare better this season.
The AIS side are clearly a talented bunch - they later pushed a Swifts reserve line-up all the way, losing 68-49.
But yesterday's Pulse defeat will add strength to the calls from across the Tasman to have another Australian side in the ANZ Championships at the expense of a Kiwi team.
The Australian netball community have long argued that their greater player depth should entitle them to six Aussie franchises in the transtasman league and four New Zealand teams.
Pulse coach Yvette McCausland-Durie, who took over after the axing of Kate Carpenter, acknowledged the loss would give critics more ammunition.
"I think people will be critical, and we will be too, we know that we should have won ... but we're just fortunate it's only pre-season," she said.
Just three players remain from last year's disastrous campaign, with most of the Pulse's more experienced players, including star import Sonia Mkoloma, leaving in the off-season.
McCausland-Durie said her side have a lot to learn quickly.
"We're certainly still in development phase. We're realistic we've still got a lot of work to do, but we're quite clear about what we want to achieve," she said. "I think we were really conscious coming in here that we wanted to win quarters, and we would assess the quarters which we didn't win, which of course was the fourth and have a close look at it."
She said the game highlighted a number of key areas to work on.
"Ball placement was a bit of a challenge for us today, we weren't reading where people are heading and putting it in the right spaces. It's a simple game and our execution just wasn't sharp enough."
