By RICHARD BOOCK
Yvonne Willering is expecting greater tactical awareness from the New Zealand netballers in tomorrow night's Fisher and Paykel Series opener against Team Pasifika.
Apart from the lack of vision and passing nous during last week's debacle against Australia, one of the most disconcerting aspects of New Zealand's game was the inability to identify what was going wrong, let alone find a solution.
The Silver Ferns seemed only capable of adjusting when Willering pulled the strings at the quarter breaks, leaving question marks hovering over the team's mental game and, to a lesser extent, over Bernice Mene's leadership qualities.
Whatever difficult circumstances might have surrounded the Newcastle rout, it is difficult to escape the observation that New Zealand - under former skipper Belinda Colling - was a solitary shot away from beating Australia in October, and were crushed by 23 goals under different generalship last week.
New Zealand assembled in Auckland yesterday and after training morning and afternoon sat down to analyse a videotape of last Tuesday night's 53-30 disappointment.
Willering said the squad had "openly" discussed the lack of adjustment against Australia and she was sure all the players would carry relevant lessons forward.
"The fact is that we didn't adjust," she said last night. "I could see what was going on from the sideline and we made changes at halftime, but we never recovered from that loss of momentum.
"If it was just a case of an individual player having a bad day, then we could have made a change and fixed things straight away, but the whole team took a dive and by the time we got together to talk, it was too late."
With Tania Nicholson called into the squad as a replacement for Donna Loffhagen, the Ferns are without both the shooters they started in last year's world championship final, and as a result have been forced to pay close attention to the new combinations in their attacking line.
Irene van Dyk played her first test for New Zealand last week, Nicholson has 20 minutes of international experience and Harper just a handful of caps. All three can expect a torrid workout from the likes of Fijian captain Vilimaina Davu and New Zealand training squad member Sheryl Clarke.
"The face of the team has changed," Willering said. "There's new personnel, new combinations, and it's not like we didn't have anything to work on in the first place.
"But everyone's keen to go forward from here, and it's good to have a chance to address last week's disappointment."
Netball: Silver Ferns to rework tactics
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