Netball: Silver Ferns keep secrets of their preparation

Tracey Fear. Photo / Getty Images

If New Zealand's bid to win back-to-back titles at major tournaments at this week's world netball championships in Singapore sounds overly scientific, it is.

After winning gold at last year's Commonwealth Games final, the Ferns came up with the code-name "G2" for their world championships campaign.

That didn't take a lot of brain-power, but getting to the point where they could win two pinnacle events in consecutive years did.

Before Silver Ferns coach Ruth Aitken took over the team in 2001, New Zealand's success at major tournaments was sporadic at best.

They had won just two world titles outright and shared a third since the world championships were introduced in 1963, and won a couple of golds in the 1980s at the World Games - an event set up for non-Olympic and Commonwealth Games sports. The 90s were a disaster.

Yet over the past 10 years New Zealand have won a world championship and two Commonwealth Games titles, and if the talk around the Singapore Indoor Stadium this week is to be believed, are the favourites to add another gold to their collection tomorrow night.

Netball New Zealand's high performance manager Tracey Fear believes the Silver Ferns' improved standing on the world stage is directly related to the increased weight they have placed on the team's sports science programmes.

Fear, who started her role a year before Aitken took over the helm of the Ferns, said there was growing recognition in the early 2000s that to keep pace with Australia, there needed to be significant improvement in the conditioning of the players.

With Aitken and her then assistant coach Leigh Gibbs, the Ferns management team came up with a demanding programme for the team, with a heavy focus on fitness and strength and conditioning.

"The 2003 team was the fittest team that had ever left New Zealand and they set a new standard for every team to follow," said Fear.

Since 2003 Fear has seen the Ferns support staff swell every year, to include strength and conditioning coaches, power scientists, nutritionists, performance analysts, sports psychologists and specialist coaches.

"I don't think any one person drove it. The beauty of the management team that we've got on board is that they're so open, so for us it's like 'what else can we be doing'?

"The New Zealand Academy of Sport really opened our eyes to how we could be improving."

With the world class input of strength and conditioning coach Matt Kritz, power specialist Mike McGuigan and sports psychologist Alex McKenzie, Fear believes many of the things the team are doing are world firsts.

"There are some things I can't tell you about because we think we're the only team that is doing it," said Fear.

"But it is that integration of all those sports science elements that are working in unison together that is starting to pay dividends for us."