Written in the Stars: Netball icons reunited

NZ Herald

24-04-2025

Silver Ferns team-mates through the 2000s – and 2003 world champions – Bailey and de Bruin have teamed up again hoping to bring something new to the Stars' game, including an Australian flourish.
And they know they're on the same page.
'We just trust. And trust is massive in this environment,' says Bailey, 49 and a proud grandmother of seven.
'It's really important the players get the same message from us, and understand we're in unison and we're tight. So yeah, we do finish off each other's sentences…'
'…and we did before we even started this,' de Bruin, 47, finishes for her.
For the past three years, Bailey has lived in Australia, as head coach of the Gold Coast Titans (where her son, Erin Clark, was also playing league in the NRL).
De Bruin finished her playing career with the Stars in 2022 and has since been focused on her job in the construction industry, and being mum to her teenage son, Caleb.
Their reunion, you could say, was written in the Stars.
When Kiri Wills announced last July that she was leaving the franchise after seven seasons to become head coach of the Queensland Firebirds in the Suncorp Super Netball league, de Bruin texted Bailey and asked if she'd thought about returning home to Auckland to coach.
'She said, 'Oh we'll see',' says de Bruin. 'So as soon as I heard she'd got the role, I told her I'd really love to coach with her, if that was in her plans. She said the first person she thought of was me, and that we'd make quite a good team.
'I didn't know how I'd make it work logistically, but I hoped my employer would be understanding.'
Bailey says it was 'weird' de Bruin beat her to the call, 'because I was going to call her that afternoon, but Australian time.
'It's been so nice to have her here, because I don't have to worry. I just say a sentence, and she's like, 'Yeah, got it'. And if she doesn't agree with something, she'll speak up. I think we're at that stage of our relationship where that's not going to hurt anyone's feelings.'
Stars captain Maia Wilson says it's a full-circle moment having her former teammates back in purple.
'It's really cool we're bringing back people who've been a part of the club for so long and reinvesting in them,' she says.
'They're a bit of yin and yang. Bubby has the cheeky personality and Vlooi can be straight up, but she actually has those devil horns, too.
'It's great having their energy and liveliness and banter, but once we get on court, there's definitely the player-coach relationship.
'Seeing that coming to training is their happy place is rubbing off on everyone.'
'Go-to' people
De Bruin remembers when they first met, in South Africa in 2000.
The young Proteas defender wasn't playing in that series, recovering from glandular fever, but Bailey made an effort to come and speak to her at a game.
'I remember this lovely, bubbly little Māori girl who came over to say 'hi',' de Bruin says.
'Bubby is such an all-round freakin' awesome person.'
They bonded when de Bruin moved to New Zealand for netball, both playing for the Northern Force, coached by Yvonne Willering, in the National Bank Cup.
'Coming out of South Africa, young and green and struggling with the adjustment, they took me under their wing,' de Bruin says.
'Bubby was brilliant at making me feel comfortable. Her, Sulu [Fitzpatrick] and Vilimaina [Davu] really looked after me – and still do. Then Bubby and I were together through the Mystics, the Ferns and then the Stars [both foundation players in 2017].
'But whenever things got tough, she was always the go-to person for me.'
Bailey responds: 'I think it goes both ways. It's quite a special friendship'.
In 2019, Bailey was both assistant coach and player in the Stars, and de Bruin had just returned to the side after playing for the Adelaide Thunderbirds. The team reached the grand final for the first time that year (they've since featured in three finals, but a title remains elusive).
After the sport sputtered through the Covid pandemic, Bailey became head coach of the Comets, in the league below the premiership. She felt her coaching career was in a rut when the Gold Coast Titans opportunity came up in 2022.
'It was perfect timing, and I absolutely loved it. I created a pathway from scratch in the Gold Coast for young girls and boys who loved the game of netball. Before then players had to go to Brisbane to get ahead,' she says.
'There was no culture – or it was a totally different culture to what we have in New Zealand. It was really eye-opening.
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'On the court, players were all about themselves, and had their blinkers on, to the point where I'd say, 'Did you even know your teammate was there?' So it was about giving them the knowledge about how you work together as a team.
'I started to embed different things from a Kiwi style, like in structure, and they loved it. Away from the netball court was pretty challenging, because I did the operational side as well.'
Her first year was confronting.
'I found we didn't have the right people in the mix… I had to put my big girl pants on and say 'Oh, you're not for us'. When I was younger, I hated any confrontational conversations, so I learned a lot from that,' she says.
'The Gold Coast Titans are very professional and have all the resources at their fingertips in the rugby league space, so it was very cool soaking up all their knowledge.
'I learned heaps about myself as a person, too, and I think I know who I am as a coach now. I'm Temepara, the coach, as opposed to Temepara, the former Silver Fern who became a coach.'
Invisible threads
De Bruin apologises to Bailey that she can't do more for her.
'I'd love to give more, but I can't,' she says.
Bailey is more than understanding. She knows her assistant is juggling her first coaching role with a fulltime job – as project manager with Octa Project Management.
Living in the far south of Auckland, de Bruin works between Hamilton and Auckland Airport, where she's been managing the fit-out of the domestic terminal. She ties in her two days in Auckland with Stars trainings.
'I said to Jane, our manager, 'I'll collapse in July',' she laughs.
'It's chaotic, but you make it work, eh?
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'I would love to be more involved in the planning and support Bubby a bit more, but real life gets in the way. Once the season starts [on May 10] it should be a little easier.'
De Bruin loves the 'buzz' of giving back to the game where she made her name as an athletic, dogged in-circle defender, who played 138 internationals. But the challenges stretch beyond getting to trainings on time.
'The game has changed quite a lot and it's definitely a different environment now – with a different generation of players. How you treat them is challenging at times,' she says.
'I'm having to learn how to get my message across to the players that we're going to be different, and getting them to buy into that. I think the trust is there, though.
'Some of them were with us in the past when we had some success, and you can be brutally honest with them because they know we're only doing it to get the best out of them.
'If they didn't know me, they'd probably think 'Oh my gosh, this girl is so grumpy!''
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Still lithe and fit, de Bruin isn't afraid to take the court to portray their vision. She runs on court every chance she has to make up numbers. 'I'm always the first to jump out there,' she admits.
'But I'm also quite content not to play anymore. And I'm certainly happy not doing all the fitness tests.'
She soaks up Bailey's coaching knowledge. 'I told her the other day, I didn't know how to fix something and she goes, 'You don't have to fix it. We can work through it',' de Bruin says.
'We demanded quite a lot from each other when we played together, and now we want to make each other better coaches.'
Bailey will also phone de Bruin when she's unsure about something.
'We don't need to be face-to-face. We're on the same page the way we want the team to play out on court,' Bailey says.
'It's like those invisible threads we used to say we had on court. Some of them were a bit wiggly, when we were at each other.'
De Bruin laughs: 'Or when I didn't go for an intercept that Bubby created. People would say 'Do you guys even like each other?' Well, yes we do.'
Sports mums
The coaches also connect over their sporting sons, sharing the weekend's results on a Monday morning.
Caleb is a promising young rugby player, who's become competitive with his mum in the gym.
'There's a few things he's starting to beat me at, which I don't like. But it's good, healthy competition,' de Bruin says.
Erin Clark has also returned home from the Gold Coast, to make an impact with the Warriors.
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The loose forward has a three-year contract with the team he made his debut with, and is set to play his 100th NRL game in Melbourne this Sunday.
'It's been so cool to watch him thriving back here,' Bailey says.
'He's had an interesting path to where he is today, but he's very thankful, and we are too.
'Having children [he's a father of three] has given him a different focus, and now he's home and getting more game time. But there are still things to work on.'
She likes to think she's still an adviser to her son's career, but she's learned to 'pick and choose the right time' to share that advice.
As she left some Kiwi influence in the Titans, has Bailey brought some Aussie flavour back to the Stars?
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'Because Vlooi played in Australia, we've talked about how we can incorporate the one-on-one defence style, but still not lose our New Zealand flavour,' Bailey says.
'It may not look like we're all doing full man-on-man, there are little parts of our game where we expect it will happen.'
De Bruin says it hasn't been easy getting the players to understand how the coaches want them to defend.
'When they get fatigued or under pressure, they go back to whatever defence they were playing. But they'll get used to it and trust the process.
'We believe it will work – once they have success with it, it will make sense,' she says.
Bailey – who continues to be a consultant to Titans netball – has experience with the new two-point shot being introduced to the ANZ Premiership for the first time; the Titans played it in Netball Queensland's Sapphire Series last season.
It helps the Stars have a couple of Aussies on the court, too – Sunshine Coast shooter Charlie Bell and Queensland defender Remi Kamo.
'They're all really good girls. I love they're all unique in their own way and offer something different. We're progressing in the right direction,' Bailey says.
'It helps that the core of this team has been together for a wee while, and making additions in different areas of the court challenges those girls to think and work differently.
'We had a player sick for a pre-season game, and when I put it in the management chat, the first reply back was from Vlooi: 'Oh my god! I get my chance!' And she looks like she can still play.'
De Bruin's return, however, wasn't to be – she's still recovering from breaking her wrist in January.
'I think that was written in the stars,' she says with a big grin.