Netball relies on retirees to fill the player void
Former Silver Ferns Casey Kopua and Katrina Rore were lured out of retirement in recent years.
Photo:
Photosport
Analysis -
When injury strikes professional netball teams regularly turn to retired players to take a bib in a comeback more common in netball than any other sport.
Whether it is smaller squad sizes, a
shorter season
or trusting experience over the untested it seems some netball coaches still have their former charges on speed dial when they have a crisis.
Former Silver Ferns defender Casey Kopua is latest to wind back the clock. Six years after she last played elite netball she was
called up
by the Giants in Australia's domestic competition on Sunday to help a team hit hard by injuries this season.
Kopua is experienced, she played 112 tests for New Zealand, won two Commonwealth Games gold medals and was a world champion. But she had never played in the Australian competition before.
Giants coach Julie Fitzgerald coached Kopua at the Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic in the former trans-Tasman competition, so knew what she was getting even if the 39-year-old mum of three had only played some club and indoor netball in recent years.
Fitzgerald justified calling (well texting) Kopua rather than a training partner or reserves player by pointing out that the Giants were the youngest team in Super Netball.
"I think the best thing I can give those young pathways athletes is to put someone out there with a bit of experience and guidance who can lead them around the court a bit," Fitzgerald told Fox Sports.
The Giants are struggling. The team is at the bottom of the ladder with one win in eight games. Kopua's involvement did not change the result.
While Kopua's comeback after such a long time away was notable, she joins a list of women who have answered an SOS.
For years coaches of New Zealand's domestic teams have opted to find injury replacements from the sidelines rather than the squad.
Northern Stars midcourter Temepara Bailey is making waves in the 2019 ANZ Premiership season
Photo:
© Photosport Ltd 2019 www.photosport.nz
Former Silver Ferns midcourt player Temepara Bailey answered the call to return to the court more than once.
Now head coach of the Stars, who have had their own
injury crisis
to start the current ANZ Premiership season, Bailey came out of retirement in
2014
to help the Mystics.
Bailey had retired from the international game in 2011 and left the Mystics in 2012. She had remained connected to the Mystics occasionally training with the team when a knee injury for Erikana Pedersen meant then-coach Deb Fuller turned to Bailey as a replacement.
By 2019 Bailey had been across town with Auckland's other ANZ Premiership side the Stars for a couple of years as an assistant coach. But when the team's captain Grace Kara withdrew due to pregnancy, Bailey, then 43 years old, went from
coach to player/coach
.
At the time, team management said they had looked at younger players associated with the Stars, but due to significant injuries head coach Kiri Wills decided that Bailey was the best person for the role and she was given a contract for the season.
Photo:
PHOTOSPORT
The Stars, and Wills, have a track record of getting players out of retirement to fill-in.
In 2021 defender
Anna Harrison came back
after two years out of the game to join the Stars. The former Silver Fern had retired in 2018 after a domestic career that had begun as a teenager in 2002. In switching from the Mystics to the Stars Harrison's return lasted two seasons.
At the time, a 37-year-old Harrison said she was inspired by Bailey's comeback.
In 2022, Harrison's unavailability for a game due to Covid opened the door for Storm Purvis to reach a milestone.
Purvis had retired in 2020 after a career hampered by knee injuries and after more than a decade as a professional had signed off with 99 national league games to her name. Alongside her role working in the media, Purvis was part of a pool of replacement players available to ANZ Premiership sides during the season played during the pandemic. Filling in for Harrison Purvis played her 100th domestic game and managed to do it for the same franchise she had retired from.
Storm Purvis (L) and Leana De Bruin (R) formed a defensive combination for the Stars in 2019.
Photo:
© Photosport Ltd 2019 www.photosport.nz
In that same season Harrison was also replaced by
Leana de Bruin
for a game. de Bruin had played already a game as a replacement player earlier in the season for the Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic marking her turn to the elite level in New Zealand for the first time since 2019 as a 44-year-old. de Bruin began her domestic career in New Zealand in 2001 and had played for the Silver Ferns between 2002 and 2016 after starting her international career in South Africa.
Former Silver Ferns' captain and defender Katrina Rore spent a decade playing for the Central Pulse, after starting her career in the South Island, but had also played for the New South Wales Swifts in 2019 as an injury replacement.
After
retiring
from international netball in late 2022, Rore had only been away from netball for a few months before her services were needed again.
In 2023 Rore was first called up in for the Stars as a one-off replacement for an ill Elle Temu - a game that happened to be against the Pulse. A few weeks later she was back with her former side as a
short-term cover
for an injured midcourter Ainsleyana Puleiata who had her season cut short just four weeks in.
Liana Leota of the Steel warms up during the ANZ Premiership Netball match, Tactix Vs Steel, at the Wolfbrook Arena, Christchurch, New Zealand, 11th May 2025. Copyright photo: John Davidson / www.photosport.nz
Photo:
© Photosport Ltd 2025 www.photosport.nz
The 2025 ANZ Premiership season is shorter than before - two rounds rather than three - and a serious injury in the first few games could end a player's season.
In the first weekend of competition several players went down and the Steel were forced to get their assistant coach Liana Leota to do double duty.
Leota joined the coaching staff this season and the 40-year-old was named to come off the bench in the Steel's opening game against the Tactix.
The former Silver Fern's last season playing domestic netball was in 2022 in the England league.
She spent 10 minutes on court at wing attack for her old club, when she was injected in the third quarter in Christchurch.
Leota was in some ways a last resort. The Steel had already brought in a Stars training partner as cover in the defensive end before Silver Fern Kate Heffernan picked up a knee in training. Running out of fit bodies, in Leota the Steel were able to quickly find someone across the game plan to step up.
Since 2017 ANZ Premiership sides have had 10 contracted players, under the old trans-Tasman competition each team had 12 contracted players.
With fewer players available squad depths have shrunk and coaches are relying on women who have kept fit, if not match fit, in a way that different codes would never consider doing.
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