Zones
Players
Danielle Tafili
Charlotte Arthurs
Grace Namana
Rachel Price
Ainsleyana Puleiata
Caitlin O’Sullivan
Api Taufa
Jade Poi
Jazz Scott
Parris Mason
Atareta McCausland-Durie
Samantha Taylor
Sarah McLeod-Venu
Renee Matoe
Georgia Mae-Stroud
Salote Taufa
Zalika Clarke
Head Coach
Anna Andrews-Tasola
Assistant Coach
Ngarama Milner-Olsen
Assistant Coach
John Atkins
Team Manager
Sarona Sullivan
Primary Care
George Metuarau
Physio
Ari Carroll
S&C Trainer
Nicole Misseldine
Performance Analyst
Dessi Broughton
Players
Bianca Nagaiya
Grace McLean
Abby Erwood
Colleen Fale’afaga
Ainsleyana Puleiata
Caitlin O’Sullivan
Charity Polu
Jade Poi
Jazz Scott
Madison Thomas
Ofa Vatikani
Ruby Stirling
Sarah McLeod-Venu
Storm Gilmer
Tali Uia
Torren Isaako
Head Coach
Anna Andrews-Tasola
Assistant Coach
Emma Weenink
Assistant Coach
John Atkins
Team Manager
Sarona Sullivan
Primary Care
George Metuarau
S&C Trainer
Nicole Misseldine
Performance Analyst
Dessi Broughton
Performance Coach Development
In 2016 of NCZ’s four ANZ and Central Manawa coaches, only one, Yvette McCausland Durie, had a NNZ coach qualification. In 2023 that has changed and today all our coaches are qualified to or on the PCQ pathway.
We have appointed Anna Andrews to the Pulse Head Coach role for 2024 and we will support her by appointing an Assistant Coach with complementary skills and expertise. We will continue to appoint specialist coaches to work with the Pulse and Central Manawa campaigns in the areas of shooting, mid court and circle defence. Additionally, we will invite guest coaches to add their expertise to our campaigns too.
In the NNL space, we will appoint two Central Manawa Assistant Coaches, one of whom will be based outside Wellington to ensure we spread NNL campaign expertise across the Zone. This will take the number of coaches directly involved in the two Zone campaigns to five, up from four in 2019.
In the Emerging Talent space, we will build a pool of coaches with the game knowledge, experience, capability and desire to step into the ANZ Premiership. We will continue to work closely with NNZ to support the implementation of the PCQ programme, closely supporting a small number of coaches each year to complete the course. And, where we see opportunity, we will seek to identify and fast track high potential coaches into PCQ. To support this work we will re-establish the PCQ coach cohort and work to grow the opportunities available to our next tier of coaches. Each year we will aim to produce 2 new PCQ coaches, offering support in observations, producing personal development plans, communicating with NNZ and offering at least 3 Zone led development opportunities per annum. And we will continue to deploy all our identified coaches into Centre Tournament opportunities and the Advanced Camp.
Accordingly, NCZ will continue to ensure performance coach opportunities are developed and implemented within the NCZ suite of programmes to ensure that we have a surfeit of appropriately skilled home grown coaches for our next recruitment processes.
Zone Selectors
The Zone has appointed a Head of Selectors (HoS) who has been available to help Centres in their selection work. In this four year cycle, we will continue to grow a network of selectors who select and de-select at every level of the Centre representative programmes and who support the Head of Selectors in the zone performance programme.
The role of the selector network will continue to be to give life to the NCZ performance plan by selecting the best athletes into our teams and squads thereby ensuring our squads and teams enjoy the highest levels of success.
Budget permitting, we will strive to have an NCZ selection presence at all national domestic events – age groups, schools and any other events. This will allow us to keep an eye on the movement of our players in and out of our programmes; through our programmes; and in and out of the Zone.
Umpire Development
NCZ has a comprehensive strategy to ensure we continue to dominate the performance umpire space. In 2023 we have 4 International Umpire Award holders, 6 umpires in the national squad, 4 umpires in the national watchlist and 2 national umpire coaches/selectors. To ensure we maintain this level of representation we focus our support on umpires who have potential to be selected for NNZ Open Championships and NNZ U18 Championship by selecting these umpires into two squads. The squads each have an annual programme which is delivered by 5 umpire coaches. The focus of these programmes is based on the 5 Pillars of Performance; Tactical, Technical, Mental, Physical and Management, to develop umpires who have on and off court skills to succeed nationally.
Alongside the umpire programme we have implemented an Emerging Coach programme to ensure we have coaches who have the skills to support our umpires, and to create succession into national coach positions.
NCZ works with centres to create umpire development programmes that will feed umpires into our squads, and to ensure that centres have appropriately qualified umpires for their representative programmes. Additionally, we support representative umpires through ensuring we have umpire coaches at local representative tournaments to identify and coach umpires towards zone squad selection.
NZSS Programme
The NCZ NZSS development programme is an identification and development programme that provides fitness testing, feedback, sport science education and some programme support for promising secondary school players during the off season. It is designed to prepare participants for the NNZ Development Camp and the upcoming season.
The programme starts in October with tournament play where the most promising players are identified for further development; this is followed by an Advanced Camp for those identified players; and ends with a January camp led by Netball New Zealand.
The tournament play is led by the participating Centres with implementation support from NCZ; the Advanced Camp is led by NCZ; and the January camp is implemented by Netball New Zealand.
The programme commences with Centre’s, in consultation with NCZ, selecting and preparing teams to compete in cross-Zone tournaments. At these tournaments NCZ selectors work with Centre selectors to decide which athletes might participate in the Advanced Camp.
The final list of athletes to be invited to the Advanced Camp will be decided by the NCZ Head of Selectors. These athletes will be provided strength & conditioning programmes and expert coaching to help them prepare for the national development camp in January. All participating athletes will receive a completed NCZ player profile detailing their achievement against the NCZ performance standards.
This is a de-centralised programme and NCZ contact with these athletes is limited. Therefore, Centres are strongly encouraged to add their support and encouragement to these young athletes during their preparation phase.
Successful NZSS athletes will be required to pay the full costs of any ongoing camps or competitions, should they be selected for the final NNZ NZSS team. Centres are encouraged to work closely with any athletes who do win national selection to ensure they can meet the additional financial obligations that will arise.
Performance Programmes in Centres
Recognising the ongoing success of Netball Wellington Centre’s performance programme, NCZ will continue to pursue the implementation of similar programmes in the other lead Centres, Netball Manawatu, Netball Taranaki and Netball Hawkes Bay. We will support all four of our lead Centres to create and/or continue their own high performance programmes, which identify and develop their best young players. NCZ will help each lead Centre to achieve this by providing advice, guidance, regular visits and guest coaches when available.
Each performance programme will be tailored to be fit for purpose for the respective Centre taking advantage of the fact that each one has excellent leaders to provide support to their Centre programmes:
- Netball Wellington Centre: Sandra Edge
- Netball Hawkes Bay: Charissa Barham and Irene van Dyk
- Netball Taranaki: Jaqua Pori-Makea-Simpson
- Netball Manawatu: Ashleigh Kate Araroa and Renee Matoe
This programme is an opportunity to grow the capacity of our lead Centres to implement performance programmes that will in turn underpin the Zone performance programme and grow our cohort of emerging, talented secondary school players.
We will also support the smaller Centres with their performance programmes, upon request in a bespoke, mutually beneficial way that makes the most effective and efficient use of our combined resources.
Centre Age-grade Representative Programmes
NCZ recognises that Centres are largely staffed by volunteers and so additional work in the performance player development area is difficult to achieve. Therefore, NCZ’s approach in this space will be to continue to support all Centres with specific resources to help them enhance their current and ongoing representative team programmes. In working in this way Centres will be contributing to the Zone’s overarching performance objectives without adding tasks to their already crowded calendars.
Centre representative team programmes are short campaigns that commence in April with trials and end with the national or pinnacle tournament event sometime in July.
NCZ will provide all Centres with a set of resources that could be used in conjunction with their representative teams. These resources include the following –
- Sample annual calendar detailing what events should take place and when
- NCZ age appropriate player profile
- NCZ age appropriate player training diary
- Sample selection policy
- Sample trial team list schedule to record player positions and quarters
- Simple analysis tool
- Simple campaign evaluation tool
- ‘Slack’ contact tool
There is no expectation that Centres will use all or any of these tools. They are simply made available for Centre use to help in the development of performance players.
NCZ will provide ongoing support around these tools for all Centres through the Emerging Talent Manager, who supports our Centres to assess, feedback and develop their athletes and coaches. We achieve this by regularly and consistently deploying our Emerging Talent Manager into Centres; by developing, reviewing, updating and distributing appropriate resources annually and by inducting Centre volunteers and staff in how to use them; and by deploying our Emerging Talent Manager into tournaments to support and mentor coaches as they are coaching.
We also work with Centres to provide ongoing support for those athletes who are identified to progress further along the performance pathway. We engage with Centres to help them support their identified athletes, with the goal of getting those athletes selected into NNZ programmes.
We will support Centre representative team managers too, with tailored development opportunities to address identified manager needs.
Pulse
The ANZ Premiership is netball’s pinnacle domestic competition in New Zealand. It is the premier professional, domestic competition for women in this country, and is the vehicle by which netball remains the most played female sport in the country.
The Pulse programme is led and implemented by NCZ and is strongly aligned to NNZ’s performance programme. The alignment of Pulse and NNZ protocols is critical in ensuring a ‘one athlete-one plan’ approach that enhances and supports individual athlete development.
The Pulse programme begins in September and the ANZ Premiership runs from April to August. Each ANZ Premiership team comprises 10 contracted athletes and an allowance of training partners. All Pulse contracted athletes are committed to a professional netball environment from September to August and they are expected to reside in Wellington for the duration of the competition season.
Selection of contracted Pulse athletes takes into consideration appropriate skill, positional roles, mindset, experience and commitment to the Pulse performance culture and expectations. Being a Pulse athlete requires strong role modelling, an element of service to our game and community and a genuine commitment to self- responsibility for the betterment of performance outcomes. Training partners are contracted for varied periods (pre and in season) and are expected to commit to all team conditioning, netball, recovery and review sessions as directed by the Head Coach. Training partners are an option for inclusion into a Pulse team roster at any given time.
Each athlete completes an induction process, which includes physical screenings along with life management skills, and has an individual performance plan (IPP), which reflects her broad spectrum of on and off court needs. We use this plan to assist the athlete to enhance both her life and netball performances. Standards are measured and monitored against NNZ national performance guidelines and protocols whilst striving to achieve world class leading results.
Following inductions, all athletes are engaged in off-season training programmes with regular monitoring to ensure they enter the season in the best physical condition to perform. Seasonal plans are developed to reflect the demands of professional netballers and as such conditioning and netball practices occur daily relative to the competition schedule. One ‘athlete day off’ per working week is included in the schedule along with recovery, analysis, IPP reviews and specialist sessions to ensure a performance culture and environment is sustained.
We contract with NNZ to provide athlete services in nutrition, athlete life, conditioning, mental skills and physiotherapy. Similarly, NCZ contracts independent providers for analysis and medical services. The NZNPA (NZ Athletes Association) are engaged by NNZ to ensure athlete contracts and conditions align to professional work standards and expectations.
Currently the Pulse team has a core of young but experienced athletes. We have been focused on building a new foundation to take us through the next four year pinnacle cycle. The legacy of success and excellence that has been established inspires us to lift our performance standards to dominate the ANZ competition and be a world class leading club.
Our Performance System
The definitive measure of any high performance team is winning in pinnacle events; and winning these events requires the ability to consistently deliver under pressure. The premise of this strategy is that players who can deliver under pressure are produced by a strong, performance system that combines a structured learning environment with appropriately challenging competition opportunities.
At NCZ we believe that to win pinnacle events, we need a performance programme that produces athletes with the skill set to win and a pathway that equips them with the playing experience and understanding of how to win under pressure.
The foundation of our netball pathway is Netball New Zealand’s Player Development Guidelines, which are attached as Appendix 1. Alongside this framework Netball Central Zone has developed Performance Standards, which are attached as Appendix 2. These Performance Standards bring together the Development Guidelines and the Essentials Elements to outline the expected hauora, physical, tactical, and technical capability of athletes at each stage of their development pathway.
The NCZ player development pathway starts with our Centre performance/representative programmes, which culminate in annual Talent Camps and/or Tournaments to identify and develop our best secondary school age players. Centre talent development initiatives link to Zone performance initiatives through the annual Advanced Camp, where the best age group players from the Centres are further developed.
Thereafter, NNZ and NCZ identify athletes to attend the annual National Development Camp, from which the New Zealand Secondary School squad is selected.
In 2024 NCZ will place emphasis on those players, coaches, managers and officials who are eligible to represent New Zealand at the World Youth Games in Gibraltar in 2025. From 2025, emphasis will focus back to athletes born in 2008 and later, in preparation for the 2029 World Youth Cup.
Senior player development is delivered at the Zone level through the Pulse and Central Manawa campaigns, which are delivered centrally through detailed campaign plans that prioritise individual development alongside team outcomes, and which are aligned to the Silver Ferns campaign plan.
NNZ campaign squads are selected annually from the domestic competitions in which our Zone teams compete. We support all our eligible players, coaches, managers, and officials to be selected for international events, culminating in the Commonwealth Games and the World Netball championships in 2027.
We continuously review our player pathway, recognising that we live in constrained financial times and that scarce resources mean our performance programs must be as effective, accessible, and targeted as possible.
Figure 2: Player Development Pathway
Player Development
NCZ player development occurs through four programmes with different delivery mechanisms. The Pulse and Central Manawa programmes are centrally driven by NCZ; the leadership and implementation of the New Zealand Secondary School (NZSS) identification and development programme will be shared between Centres and NCZ; the lead Centre Performance programmes and all age grade representative programmes are Centre led with support from NCZ.
The meeting will now be held ONLINE on Monday 25th March 2024 starting at 7pm. The link will be sent closer to the time.
We would like to congratulate the following players on being selected for the Northern Marvels and NZEPP squad for 2024.