Pulse Ready To Roll As Coach Takes A Back Seat

Despite a positive Covid-19 test stalling her much-awaited comeback to the ANZ Premiership netball league with Te Wānanga o Raukawa Pulse, with the odd exception, it’s largely business as usual for coach Yvette McCausland-Durie.

On the eve of the Pulse’s double-header against the Northern Mystics (Saturday) and Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic (Sunday) in Porirua, McCausland-Durie’s return after a year’s hiatus has been stymied for a second successive week.

After their Round 1 match was postponed, recovering players have since returned to the fold ready for action but the wait for McCausland-Durie will last a little longer.

However, never one to sit idle, the meticulous planner is still pulling some important strings from behind the scenes, the coach having a virtual presence at the team’s final training runs while also securing her place as part of the allotted bench space for management during the weekend’s matches, albeit from a distance.

``Technologically, I will be connected in some way, shape or form,’’ she said.

``However, I think it’s really important that I’m not too present. I’d literally just be chatting to the coaches, I don’t want to be in the team talk, the coaches have to be able get on and do what they’ve got to do and the team have to feel that they’re engaged with the people in front of them.’’

McCausland-Durie has a ready-made replacement stepping into her shoes in the form of well-credentialled Netball Central Director of High Performance and specialist coach, Wai Taumaunu.

``In regards to Covid, we’ve talked a lot about a whole range of scenarios and we’ve certainly been through it big-time with the players,’’ McCausland-Durie said. ``Whatever has happened, the great thing is that everybody just rolls into action. I had everything set up for the game, everything was done and we’re just waiting to get to game time now.

``And we had talked about cover, who would do what, who would go where, so yeah, everyone just pretty much rolled into action. I’m not that dramatic as a person and the ethos is, we just keep going.

``I feel really confident that we’ve done everything we can and we’re ready to go. I’m really confident in all our staff around the group. It was likely it was going to happen at some stage during the season. We’re grateful that it’s a home game as it allows us to put everything in place around us that we know and are familiar with.’’

That means three Central Manawa (National Netball League) players – Ainsleyana Puleiata (midcourt), Parris Mason (defence) and Renee Matoe (midcourt/shooter) – have been added to provide cover from the bench.

``We’re now up to day 17 and that’s quite a long time not to have had the required intensity, so there may be intermittent rotation to give players a chance to freshen up and go back out,’’ McCausland-Durie said of her frontliners.

``If it was a single game, they might have been able to handle it and then you’d have all week to recover but we’ve got to be a bit more mindful that they’ve got to turn around and go again the next day.’’

McCausland-Durie is expecting to face a full-strength Mystics, who were without prolific shooter Grace Neweke and potent defender Phoenix Karaka when they suffered a first-round loss to the Magic.

``I think that will be the case all season, when what you see one week might not necessarily be what you see the next week with teams. Last week was their first game and at this stage you can’t read too much into it,’’ she said.

``Our expectation is that we want two wins from this weekend.

``We know that every week counts, every game counts and regardless of what we’ve been through, we’ve worked really hard in the return to play and we have to trust that the work we did in the pre-season will give us a good platform to work from.’’

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