Mercurial midcourter Liana Leota knows better than most how important the top two inches are in elite netball.
She's just hoping to get a chance to demonstrate that when the Silver Ferns meet Australia here tomorrow in the first of a two-test series leading into next month's world championship in Singapore.
A year ago, the 26-year-old wing attack finished a stellar season as part of the gold medal-winning New Zealand team at the New Delhi Commonwealth Games.
Leota also took out the most valuable player award from the 2010 trans-Tasman netball league, and was a netballer on top of her game.
This year, she has looked a different player, showing only patchy form as a calf injury on the Silver Ferns' mid-January tour to England lingered on well into this year's trans-Tasman league.
Leota's Southern Steel franchise, hit heavily by injury early on, could only manage a seventh-place finish, a big disappointment after making the playoffs in 2010.
A fast-moving, intuitive player with an eye for a gap, Leota's confidence plummeted and her game suffered noticeably.
Leota is brutally honest in her self-appraisal.
"I was poor. Very, very poor," she told NZPA today.
"I couldn't fire, I couldn't find a rhythm and I think I lost confidence towards the end. I wasn't letting the balls go that I should have."
Regaining that confidence, pivotal in a wing attack's role as a vital line of supply into the shooters, has been a real focus for Leota over the last four weeks.
"In camp they've been telling me 'let it go, don't think about it: what you see, when you see it, let it go'."
Despite her pedigree -- she has 20 caps for the Silver Ferns -- Leota is making no assumptions about any right to court time tomorrow night. Her top priority, she said, will be simply to make the most of any opportunities.
"In ANZ, I didn't really get a chance to be my usual self. So for me now, it's about being confident in letting the ball go.
"I need to do a lot of early prep getting free, and then just deliver good ball to my shooters."
Managing that tomorrow against defending world champions Australia, hell-bent on exacting revenge for their New Delhi loss, would do wonders for rebuilding confidence.
"It's definitely a learning curve for me, and I know I can grow from this. It's something I need to take on board and step up.
