All hands on deck - new Southern Steel coach Noeline Taurua has joined the team to prepare for its ANZ Championship campaign.
Taurua, who replaced former coach Janine Southby in December, put the team through her first on-court training session at the Edgar Centre in Dunedin yesterday.
She has been on holiday and flew back into the country from Los Angeles just yesterday morning.
"To be honest, it's not ideal,'' she said.
"But I had already made commitments prior to getting this job. It was stuff I had to end up doing.
"But while I have been away, I have been communicating every day to get a grip on it.
"I think when I started a bit later in December, we were on the back foot. But I'm proud how the management has pulled everything together quite fast. There is a lot of change, but they have been quite open and attitudes have been really positive.''
Taurua coached the Waikato-Bay of Plenty Magic to the ANZ Championship title in 2012, the only occasion a New Zealand team has won the competition since its inception in 2008.
Now, she is working with a youthful Steel team she believes is in a good position to improve on last year's three-win season.
Taurua met the team before Christmas but yesterday was the first time she put it through its paces on court.
The Steel will also train in Dunedin today and tomorrow, in what is a busy netball weekend at the Edgar Centre.
Netball South is also holding national league trials, while New Zealand secondary schools coach Julie Seymour is in town for talent-identification sessions for the zone's under-15 and under-17 players.
Taurua does not have long to put her fingerprints on the team before it plays its first pre-season games.
The Steel will play the Mainland Tactix and Canterbury men's team in Ashburton in a fortnight's time, before playing the Netball South national league team in Queenstown the following weekend.
It will then travel to Auckland for a pre-season tournament on March 18-20.
Transtasman league officials announced a rule change for the Auckland tournament, including two matches for each team and a three-point shooting zone.
Considering the tournament is just a couple of weeks before the season opener, Taurua is hardly excited by the idea.
"I'm assuming they are using it as a bit of hype for that tournament,'' she said.
"But in reality, it does not set us up if we are starting to change our game to go into these three-point shots.
"For me, personally, we have got a lot of other things to nail first. It's about our team values and how we link them on to on-court value.
"What defines us as a team and what kind of game play we want to play out there. We have only got six weeks to get some of our court strategies nailed.
"But if we can get our foundation strong for the first six weeks and slowly build as the season goes on, that's our intent.''
The Steel has been criticised in recent years for being too one-dimensional in attack by firing long balls to towering Jamaican goal shoot Jhaniele Fowler-Reid.
But Taurua does not have a problem with the ploy and said netball was a simple game.
"You get the ball down one end to other, you pass and catch and put it through the hoop. How we do that, I don't really care. If it works for us, so be it.''
Taurua, who has five children, lives in Mount Maunganui and will commute between Dunedin and Invercargill while in charge of the Steel.
During the season, she will spend week-long "blocks'' in both cities, before taking a couple of days off to go home when it suits.
Her children will also head south during school holidays to spend time with her.
Taurua was the favourite to replace Waimarama Taumaunu as national coach late last year, but was overlooked in favour of Southby.
However, Taurua said she was treating the Steel job as a "blessing'' and could not wait for the team to hit the court.
When asked if she still had ambitions to coach the Silver Ferns, she said she was not sure.
"It seems like so long ago that I didn't get the position,'' she said.
"I just want to give this job my all and see what we can do.
"It's another four years [before it's free]. I don't know, I could be dead by then.''
