KEY POINTS:
On the beaches of Hahei and Gisborne this summer, Ruth Aitken and Leigh Gibbs will no doubt be contemplating their futures with the Silver Ferns.
Whether they win or lose within the next 24 hours, the New Zealand netball coach and her assistant are contracted in their jobs until March next year. As with any professional sport, their performance at these world championships will be reviewed as it has been at the end of every season since 2001.
Unlike Graham Henry and his band of back-ups, the Aitken-Gibbs partnership has been fruitful on the world championship plane, with victory in 2003. The year leading up to this tournament has not been one of their finest, but the result of one game tonight may seal their near-futures.
Aitken's record as coach of the Ferns has been strong - before last night's semifinal with Jamaica, it stood at 55 wins and 11 losses. Most of those defeats have, of course, been by the Australians.
Coaching partnerships don't always work - egos clash, views collide; Aitken invited Gibbs to be her sidekick because she knew theirs would work.
The two women have a long list of similarities: they are both 51, their births separated by days; they married in the same year after playing for the winning Silver Ferns at the 1979 world championships; they both returned to their hometowns to raise two sons.
But they played at different ends of the court, their approaches to coaching are not the same, and their opinions can be at opposing ends of the spectrum.
Outsiders see that as the beauty of their partnership; they are foils for each other, they debate vigorously and listen closely, and usually meet at a better solution than they would have on their own.
Aitken is the tactical coach, who sees the big picture in situations. The matriarch figure, she takes a holistic view of the players, measuring how outside pressures affect their on-court performance. She communicates well, is open to ideas and makes her players strive to be on court.
Gibbs is a technical expert on the game. A brilliant defender and Silver Ferns captain, she has established sports science networks, been a national umpire and is now in charge of New Zealand's coaching development.
When I first saw the combination in action together in 2002, I had doubts. In the quarter-time huddle, Gibbs was at its heart, drilling the players, while Aitken was walking behind the pack. I thought she was just handing out drink bottles.
I figured that Gibbs, the Ferns coach from 1993-97, was taking back the reinsand Aitken was the shop window, thesmiling face put before the media.
Aitken later explained their quarter-break system: an attacking specialist, she listens to what the players have to say, following her philosophy that elite players should think for themselves.
"If they need me to lecture them, I haven't done my job properly," she said.
As the defence expert, Gibbs discusses changing strategies to shut down the opposition.
I'm pleased to have been proved wrong.
