Netball: Life after van Dyk?

There was a glimpse at life post-Irene van Dyk, Vilimaina Davu and Temepara George. While we did not like what we saw, the experimentation must continue tomorrow night against South Africa.

At the start of the season, the South Africa test at Auckland's Trusts Stadium would have been seen as a glorified training run. Now it takes on an extra edge. It is not a search for redemption, because beating Australia is the only way they'll achieve that. It will be a test to see whether the Ferns' second test lethargy against Australia was the result of tired players, or just a one-off shocker.

Australian co-captain Liz Ellis last week said Aitken's starting line-up was considered a "slap in the face" to her team. Good - it's a nice, but rare, feeling to be able to slap Australian faces.

It shows too that Australia was about as motivated as it could possibly be. New Zealand, on the other hand, looked as flat as any of those teams constantly battered into submission by Australia in the mid-1990s. All the stars were in alignment for Australia; they are unlikely to encounter as little resistance again from here through to next year's world championships.

Nevertheless, it was an important victory for them and a miscalculation by the Ferns. Ex-captain Vicki Wilson articulated what Australia were thinking following Saturday night's drubbing in Brisbane in her column for the Courier-Mail: "After losing nine of the previous 11 encounters with the Kiwis, the Aussie girls were starting to question their ability to break the dominance of their transtasman foes."

Now the dust has settled from that loosening of the psychological screws, Aitken's "folly" may instead come to be seen as an important juncture in the Silver Ferns' title defence.

While the loss to Australia might sting, the measurement against the Ferns' own high standards will cut deepest. The side that played last Tuesday was 22 goals worse than the victorious side from three nights earlier.

They should be asking questions of themselves: Can Casey Williams play goal defence? Is Laura Langman an international class centre yet? Can Maria Tutaia and Belinda Colling play together? They may not find those answers tomorrow night, but they could at least hunt for clues.

New Zealand has won 18 of 19 encounters, the only reverse being a two-goal loss at the 1995 world championships, a loss that effectively cost them a chance of the title.

So New Zealand should win comfortably and that, no doubt, was Aitken's justification for not waiting until tomorrow to try new combinations - it would not prove anything.

But having tried them in the toughest arena, and having seen them fail badly, those secondary combinations need more time on the court together if anything is to be salvaged from the exercise.

* Meanwhile, the Australians have reacted enthusiastically to Netball New Zealand's review of its national domestic league, with three options stemming from the review - to continue to run its current national competition as it is, a playoff between the best teams, or a fully-fledged trans-Tasman league.

Netball Australia president Noeleen Dix said they preferred the last concept.