Netball: Seeds of modern game sown 50 years ago

'We were the new breed wearing that silver fern - it was a great honour.' Photo / Herald on Sunday

When the Silver Ferns take the court against Australia in Adelaide tomorrow, it will be 50 years since Dixie Cockerton's New Zealand team first did battle against Australia in the seven-a-side game we know today.

These pioneering women were the first Kiwis to play an international test in the modern era, planting the seeds of a fierce transtasman rivalry.

To honour that rivalry, Netball New Zealand and their Australian counterparts will today unveil a new trophy the two teams will play for - a Bledisloe Cup of sorts for netball.

But 50 years ago, test matches between the two countries were extremely rare.

The game was still known as indoor basketball, but the New Zealand executive had just made the bold decision to move to international rules, which meant adopting a seven-a-side game, rather than the nine-a-side they were accustomed to.

And so, in August 1960 a New Zealand-representative team embarked on their first tour of Australia in 22 years.

The team had to raise the funds for the tour themselves, some ignoring the social norms of the time and left their husbands at home to look after the children while they attended their fundraisers and committee meetings to plan the tour, which involved three tests and 12 games.

Netball New Zealand president Dame Lois Muir, with other greats of the era June Waititi and Betty Steffensen, were in the 10-strong team on that historic tour.

Dame Lois said the significance of the tour was not lost on the group.

"We were the forerunners because there hadn't been a New Zealand team picked for many, many years and no one had sort of had to do that travel and play," she said.

"We were the new breed wearing that silver fern - it was a great honour. And I think we were, not disciples so much, but we were representing something that was pretty important going forward."

Dame Lois still has the scrapbook containing the memorabilia from that first ground-breaking tour.

Included in her book of keepsakes, her ticket to Sydney - "53 pounds and seven shillings for a return fare, I remember it cost me".

And she remembers the nervous excitement on that sunny but crisp Adelaide day when they took to the grass court for the first time in a test match against Australia.

"We played on the centre tennis court in Adelaide, and that was beautiful," she said.

"We were so excited to be playing with people in the grandstand - we thought we were made."

New Zealand went on to win the match 49-40, but lost their second test in Melbourne 44-39 and suffered a heartbreaking one-goal loss in the final test in 46-45.

Still, the team took great satisfaction from their results given they had been playing the new version of the game for only a short time.

New Zealand was the only country that played 9-a-side and the very few previous Transtasman tests held before 1960 were played under a clumsy mixture of both sets of rules.

But by the late 1950s, there was a growing movement to establish an international netball federation and a clear set of rules. If New Zealand wanted to compete on the world stage, it meant playing seven-a-side.

Dame Lois said it was a brave decision from the administrators.

"There was a lot of uproar, but they stuck to their guns and really they were amazing people because they saw that change had to happen if the game was to progress."