As the Silver Ferns finally return to the court against archrivals Australia, world champion goal keep Jane Watson is ready to face a few more challenges on the eve of her 50th test.
Fingers crossed, Mary and Ross Watson will be sitting in the virtually empty stands of the Christchurch Arena to witness their daughter reach a Silver Ferns milestone.
A scattering of less than 100 family and friends should be allowed into the stadium to watch the Silver Ferns play the Australian Diamonds in four tests over the next six days, with all games now being played in Christchurch (to minimise the movement of both teams in alert Level 2).
That’s played in the favour of the Watson family, who now live in the Garden City – but who brought up their daughter, Jane, in the small South Island towns of Cave and Miller’s Flat.
Watson, now the senior defender in the New Zealand side, will almost certainly earn her 50th test cap on Wednesday, the second test in the long-awaited Constellation Cup.
Watson – who turns 31 on Sunday, the day of the final test – isn’t too caught up in the numbers. “It will probably mean more to my parents,” she laughs.
And there’s no doubt it will mean a lot to the Watsons. They’ve watched their daughter overcome a cruel streak of challenges – a heart-stopping condition in her teens that needed a pacemaker, falling seriously ill with a rare infectious disease and the death of her partner – to become one of the most respected goal keeps in international netball.
“Fingers crossed they’ll be there,” says Watson of her greatest supporters through her tough times. She’d invited “a solid group” of family and friends to watch her landmark test before the country’s Covid-19 alert levels were elevated again on the weekend.
Watson hasn’t spent a lot of time pondering reaching 50 tests; the athletic and relentless defender becoming only the third player to do so in the current Silver Ferns line-up – joining Shannon Saunders who’s made 77 appearances in the black dress and Bailey Mes, hoping to add to her 71 caps after a year out with injury.
“It’s funny because you don’t think it’s going to come around and suddenly it’s here,” says Watson, who admits hating netball until she was a teenager.
With the Silver Ferns treating their preparation for this series as if they’re in a bubble within a Level 3 lockdown, Watson won’t be able to hug her family after Wednesday’s test.
“With no interaction with the crowd, it will be just seeing them from afar and chatting with them on the phone later on,” she says.
“It’s weird, but we’re pretty good at rolling with the punches now. We were exposed to the restrictions of no crowds through the ANZ Premiership last year, and I think that’s prepared us very well for what to expect here.
“We’re just being extra cautious around sanitisation, doing our check-ins wherever we go, not going to malls, to protect ourselves and our spaces so that we can actually have a game.”
Just how unique this series is, isn’t lost on Watson.
It’s the first international netball played anywhere in the world in 2021. And Tuesday will be the first test Australia has played in 492 days; their last against the world champion Silver Ferns in the deciding encounter of the Constellation Cup in October, 2019.
That’s a game Watson has well and truly forgotten. Not because it was so long ago, but it was a personal performance she didn’t want to remember.
The Ferns went into that test in Perth leading the series 2-1. A win would have given New Zealand the Constellation Cup for the first time in seven years.
Watson played the first half of that test, but went to the bench when the Ferns trailed the Diamonds, 31-18. Although they rallied, New Zealand lost 53-46 and the trophy stayed in Australia.
“For me, the last game was terrible, so I’ve forgotten about it,” Watson says. “I just moved on, took my learnings and got on with the next game.”
Diamonds captain Caitlin Bassett had a stellar shooting game in that test, and the towering Australian centurion is back in the very raw Diamonds, under new leadership, who came out of 14 days’ quarantine in Christchurch on Monday.
Watson says she’s always raring to take on Bassett (who she’ll meet on a more regular basis in this season’s ANZ Premiership, with the shooter joining the Magic after this series).
“I don’t mind the challenge,” Watson says. “I think what’s cool about our team is that we’re very unit-focused in the defensive end. So whatever the challenges we face, we like to do a variety of things together to combat it.”
It’s a very tight defensive unit the Silver Ferns take into these four tests. With pregnancies, injuries and poor fitness depleting the squad, coach Dame Noeline Taurua has chosen just three circle defenders – Watson, Karin Burger and Sulu Fitzpatrick.
It’s not something that worries Watson, who for the first time is the most senior player in New Zealand’s defence.
“I have full trust in Noels and the decisions she makes around the team. She’s obviously got a plan around how she will play things,” she says. “You’ve just got to trust the process, and if you get court time, play your heart out and do what you can to contribute.
“It’s quite nice, actually, that there aren’t a whole lot of combinations there, so you have more time to work with those [other two] players.”
Watson and Burger are now team-mates in the Tactix – with Burger moving south from the Pulse – so they’ve been able to train together in the lead-up to the Constellation Cup.
Although she’s a senior leader in the Ferns – now sharing the vice captaincy role with midcourter Gina Crampton – Watson doesn’t see her role within the team changing.
“What I do on court isn’t going to change, whether I’m young or old, or experienced or not. This is who I am and how I approach things. I just go out there and do my job and hopefully help someone else do theirs,” she says.
“I’ve obviously been chosen [as vice captain] for a reason, so why change myself? I just do me and hopefully can add value to other people’s journeys.”
The Ferns have spent some time analysing their opposition, but they’re a bit of a moving target. Half of the 14-strong Diamonds squad have yet to make their debut in international netball and for the first time in a decade, there’s a new coach, Stacey Marinkovich, in charge. They will also have a rotating captaincy policy, with a different player calling the shots on court for each test.
“There are definitely some unfamiliar faces in there, that’s for sure,” Watson says. “It will be really good to see what Aussie puts out there in the first game.
“Even though we have analysed the Aussies figuring out how they might play, the major focus has been on ourselves and what we do well, and playing to our strengths.”
This might be New Zealand’s strongest chance to win back the Constellation Cup – a trophy that has spent just one year of 11 in Netball New Zealand’s crammed silverware cabinet.
And Watson is primed for the challenge.
All four tests, at the Christchurch Arena, will screen live on Sky Sport 3; Tuesday and Wednesday 7.15pm tip-off, Saturday 4.15pm and Sunday 3.15pm.
