ANZ Premiership: Stars v Tactix. Where: Pulman Arena, Auckland. When: Monday, 7.35pm. Coverage: Live on Sky Sport 1 from 7.30pm.
Watching Jane Watson dart around the court in pre-season and snaffle turnover ball with ease, you’d never have known she’d been away.
Tactix coach Marianne Delaney-Hoshek was smiling widely after the standout defender wowed in their warm-up matches – just nine months after giving birth to her first child, daughter Tia, in May.
Watson’s sparkling pre-season play shouldn’t come as much surprise.
She was highly impressive on a limited workload at December’s national training camp and carried that form over to January’s Quad Series in Cape Town for the Silver Ferns.
READ MORE:
* Who are the locks in Silver Ferns’ World Cup squad and who’s on shaky ground?
* Silver Ferns coach calls for discussion on comical umpiring incident
* Adine Wilson says Netball Premiership a chance for players to impress World Cup selectors
Playing more minutes than originally anticipated, her return to international netball looked relatively seamless.
“It’s quite amazing, actually. I’m just in awe of Jane and how she can just have a baby and be back to what she was,” Delaney-Hoshek said.
AIMAN AMERUL MUNER/Stuff
Jane Watson signs autographs for young netball fans after a pre-season match against the Steel in Timaru.
“There’s just no fear with her. She absolutely smashed the training that she needed to do to get back and she’s looking great as well.”
Seeing Watson back in red-and-black after missing the 2022 season, should give the side an extra spring in their step. They open their season against the Stars in Auckland on Monday.
One player shouldn’t define a netball team, but without Watson the Tactix struggled, also battling several Covid outbreaks.
After narrowly losing the 2021 grand final to the Mystics, they won five of 15 games in 2022, finishing bottom of the table after the Magic edged them on goal percentage.
Gallo Images/Getty Images
Jane Watson returned to the court in January’s Quad Series in Cape Town for the Silver Ferns.
Watson’s return and a productive off-season with player recruitment could see the Tactix transform from rock bottom to title contenders.
When Watson last played for the Tactix in 2021, she built a formidable defensive pairing with fellow Fern Karin Burger, who missed the Commonwealth Games and Constellation Cup with a foot fracture.
The duo picked up a stack of defensive ball and were influential in steering the Tactix to the 2021 grand final.
“They’re two defenders you can rely on to get some ball. They’re always going to pick up something and I think the coolest thing about them is the people that play around them really lift their game as well,” Delaney-Hoshek said.
Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images
Marianne Delaney-Hoshek and the Tactix had a strong off-season with player recruitment.
“They have that effect on the other players around them.”
No team bolstered their stocks more than the Tactix this off-season, adding goal shoot Aliyah Dunn from the title-winning Pulse, who was last season’s most prolific shooter with 618 goals at 93%.
The addition of 53-test England international Laura Malcolm, who will play centre and wing defence, also provides an upgrade in the midcourt. Snapping up wing defence Greer Sinclair, who played for three sides in a Covid-impacted 2022 season, was another decent under the radar signing.
Mark Kolbe/Getty Images
England midcourter Laura Malcolm will provide a boost in the Tactix engine room.
Dunn, Malcolm, and Sinclair all reached out and approached the Tactix about a move to Christchurch.
“I’m really happy with the team that we’ve got. It’s got a really good mix of really good experience as well as young promising players. I think we’ve got a really exciting mix.”
Dunn will start alongside Silver Fern Te Paea Selby-Rickit in what should be an entertaining, but potentially enigmatic, shooting end.
When she is dialled in, Dunn is among the best goal shoots in the country. Conditioning concerns have dogged her at the next level and she appears well off the Silver Ferns’ World Cup radar.
Selby-Rickit has plenty to prove after appearing in just one match at the Quad Series, getting 23 minutes of court time. She isn’t a lock in the World Cup squad and will be targeting a strong premiership season to cement her spot.
“She did actually come back a bit fired up [from Quad Series], to be honest. She really wants to be there. She’s putting in the work and she’ll put it out on court because she has got a bit of fire in her belly.”
Beaten finalists in 2020 and 2021, the Tactix would dearly love to add their name to the ANZ Premiership title, alongside other champions, the Steel, Pulse, and Mystics.
This might be their most talented and deepest squad in the seven years of the competition.
Winning a first title in team history for their dedicated supporters, who endured some miserable times in the former trans-Tasman competition, would mean everything, Delaney-Hoshek said.
“It would be awesome because you just think about all those fans of all those years, even when the team wasn’t going so well we still had a good crowd always come out, so I just think it would be fantastic for the whole netball community and just inspiring.
“It would be fantastic to be in a position to bring that trophy home.”
