Winning Silver Ferns captains share special memories
In a unique gathering, the generations were united when New Zealand’s five Netball World Cup-winning captains joined forces to deliver a special send-off for the Silver Ferns team of 2023.
Coming together for the first time as a group, winning captains Judy Blair (Perth, 1967), Lyn Gunson (Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago,1979), Leigh Gibbs (Glasgow, Scotland, 1987), Anna Stanley (Kingston, Jamaica, 2003) and Laura Langman (Liverpool, England, 2019) spent time sharing their World Cup memories with the current Silver Ferns.
The defending champions will create a slice of history if they win the 16th edition of the Netball World Cup being held in Cape Town, South Africa, from July 28 - August 6 as they have never won back-to-back titles previously.
Blair has a special place in New Zealand netball history after becoming the first captain of a world title-winning Silver Ferns team. She played at two world tournaments, the first inspiring her to reverse the trend four years later.
“I have lots of memories from the first World Cup I went to in Eastbourne in England,” she said.
“We sailed both ways and were away a good 3-4 months. It was a fabulous tour with a lovely lot of girls and we lost by one that time in ‘63 (to Australia) and I vowed and declared that I’d wait four years and I’ll go back and win.
“In those days with the Silver Ferns you really had to wait that four years because not many teams were selected in the intervening years but it was good to go through that exercise.”
Long before other national teams engaged in challenging their opponents with a haka, the Silver Ferns of 1963 performed the ritual ahead of every match they played.
“When we first did it, we practised it a lot on the ship going over to England. We were the entertainers on the ship,” Blair said.
In Perth four years later, the haka was kept on ice, only to be unveiled if the Silver Ferns won the overall title.
“The late Monty Daniels taught us the haka and after our win, we did a very good haka,” Blair said.
“There were some people in the crowd of 5000 (Perth) that day who did the haka with us.”
In a challenging environment and against the odds, Gunson led the Silver Ferns to a share of the title in unusual circumstances with hosts Trinidad & Tobago and Australia in 1979.
The tournament rules of the time did not provide a way of determining an outright winner under the circumstances, so the three teams shared the title. There were no finals, with each of the top three teams winning eight out of nine matches.
“The three-way tie in 1979, for me, was a watershed for world netball,” Gunson said.
“There were a lot of policies and rules at that time that were just not helpful to the development of international netball, like the way the tournament was run in terms of its structure and draw and all that sort of thing.
“It forced a lot of change in international netball right through the world, so for me, that is a special tournament, of all the tournaments, because it triggered international change across the board.”
Stung four years earlier, Gibbs led the Silver Ferns to their most comprehensive World Cup title in 1987, her memories reflecting the powerful force of a cohesive team.
“That unity and collectiveness of a common goal feels really positive and it’s a real motivator,’’ she said.
“And while you’re not alone, in that you’ve got family and people that have supported you to get there, it does feel like you’ve got this great band of women who you can go to war with.
“Being a tournament rather than a tour, you’re seeing your opponents’ mostly on a daily basis, so you’re getting that vibe and collectiveness simply because you’re amongst it every day for 10 days.”
Stanley could sense the winds of change taking shape when she led the 2003 Silver Ferns to a fourth world title win, their first in 16 years.
Two on-court memories stick in her mind from the Jamaica final, the first, when midcourt dynamo Temepara Bailey was stood down for a two-goal period. It created a stir in an era when such action was almost unheard of.
“That’s probably the biggest memory I’ve got of the actual final and also looking at Belinda Colling where we had that look between us that said, `we are not going to lose this game’,” Stanley said.
“We were out there to die for each other because we had lost so many finals World Cup campaigns prior, but there was a different sense in 2003 that we were going to do it. There was a belief that we had turned a corner in terms of our mindset that we could win it.
“We weren’t afraid of losing and that we could actually win.”
At her fourth attempt, Langman, the Silver Ferns most capped player, finally got her hands on the world crown when leading the team in Liverpool.
It was another 16-year wait for the women in black and in a career laden with memories, Langman loved the simplicity of their approach in 2019.
“I was really proud of our group in 2019. We never got caught up in the score margins or what was happening in round robin.
“We literally just ran our own race. It was just another day, another opposition and every time we walked out of the tunnel, it was just another opportunity to showcase the work that we had been doing behind the scenes.
“So, I would say, when you get your chance, entertain. That’s what you work for, enjoy the moment because it only comes around once every four years and you never know if you’ll be in the next one.”