Silver Ferns hopeful Tutaia is fit and ready

Silver Fern Maria Tutaia. Photo / Greg Bowker

The Silver Ferns coaching staff are hopeful star shooter Maria Tutaia can overcome an ankle injury in time to take the court in tomorrow night's final pre-World Cup hit-out against South Africa.

Tutaia was forced to sit out the Ferns' 68-44 win over the Proteas last night after tweaking her ankle in a training run over the weekend. The injury is not considered serious, but with the Ferns' World Cup opener against Barbados just 10 days away, the decision was made to rest Tutaia as a precaution.

A call on Tutaia's availability for the tomorrow's final test in Auckland will left to the last minute as Ferns management weigh up the need to give the star shooter more court time with the new-look attack end, against the risk of exacerbating the injury so close to the World Cup.

"It's a pretty recent injury and we will continue to be conservative with her. But by the same token, Tuesday is the last opportunity to give her court time before the World Cup," said Taumaunu.

With Tutaia sidelined last night, Taumaunu's plans to trial different shooting combinations were shelved and Bailey Mes and Jodi Brown paired up for a full game.

Brown would have likely been in the starting line-up anyway, after impressing at goal attack when she replaced Tutaia at halftime in the Ferns' 91-31 win over Fiji last week.

Taumaunu said she was pleased to be able to get a good look at how the shooting combination went with two different midcourt lines.

"We took the opportunity to get a full game out of [Brown and Mes] and build that combination, so there's a silver lining to all things. I probably wouldn't have considered doing that had Maria been available, but as it turned out the whole game with the pair of them was a good thing," she said.