Norma Plummer on the future of netball in Australia, tips for country netball clubs

Spending a decade in the national team as a player, Plummer was also the former Australian Diamonds coach from 2003-2011 following a 14-year stint as the Australian Institute of Sport's head coach.

She said it was worrying that while Australia was the number one ranked team in the world, it currently did not hold a gold medal in three of the world's prominent competitions.

"At the moment I'm a bit concerned on where the development is happening," she said. "I trained the under 21 program at (the AIS) and was very disappointed when that was let go and Netball Australia didn't maintain that. It put us on the map to always stay at number one.

"But the thing that worries me is we don't have any gold medals now. That's the first time in my history that we don't have a Commonwealth Games, World Youth Cup or senior World Cup gold medal. We've always had two out of the three.

"We've got a bit of work to pull it back but Australia is pretty resilient, it's a pretty good set-up. We definitely have the best competition in the world with the SSN (Suncorp Super Netball)."

New Zealand currently holds both the senior and youth World Cups, while England won its first Commonwealth Games gold medal four years ago. Australia was runner-up in all three competitions.

Plummer, who went on to coach South Africa's national team, will be at the Commonwealth Games with the South African team in a mentoring role.

The legendary coach passed on her wisdom and some tricks of the trade to North Warrnambool Eagles players last week as part of the WorkSafe Country Club program.

Attending a training session, Plummer also had a prominent role on the bench during the Eagles' open grade contest against South Warrnambool.

"On Thursday night, there was just a few things I pointed out in their training," Plummer said. "About shortening up the pass, most of them were long and once you start using long balls all the time they get off track and they're not placed well. So shortening them up keeps the speed on the ball. We worked on that and a couple of things they could do on centre passes.

"(Saturday) they were in control of the game for a lot of the time, they just let it go in the last quarter with a few bad passes and that's all it takes.

"But they were trying to put in to practice things I'd recommended, and most of it came off, which was really good. It was never more than a two-goal differential."

Plummer said while she had been spoiled to play and coach on indoor courts over the years, she remembered starting her career outside through football and netball clubs.

"And my daughter played in the Gippsland league with Pakenham," Plummer said. "I'm very aware of how much connection the clubs have to the township and what it means."

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