No-one really believes netball is a non-contact sport any more.
Fourteen intensely competitive netballers are crammed into an unfeasibly small space, dodging elbows, knees, shoulders, heads and hips in a highly skillful game played at breakneck pace.
Former New Zealand coach Lois Muir once likened playing arch-rival Australia to taking the court with a human backpack, and injuries are just part and parcel of the game.
In 2008, New Zealand captain Casey Williams lost an impressive amount of blood on court after losing an argument with a stray elbow in the Silver Ferns' two-goal loss to Australia.
Two days out from the Silver Ferns' match against Samoa in Porirua on Saturday, evergreen goal shoot Irene van Dyk may well have set some sort of record for copping the first injury of the international calendar.
A training match last night against Wellington's national provincial championship team almost ended for van Dyk before it began.
Sporting a fat lip and the beginnings of some colourful bruising today, the lanky South African-born shooter laughed as she described last night's collision.
Blindsided by an enthusiastic, if slightly wayward defender, van Dyk ended up floored and bleeding after biting clear through her lower lip when she hit the deck.
"She just came in and bowled me over. I hadn't even had a shot! My bottom tooth went right through my lip," she said.
Van Dyk took a few minutes to regain her composure before rejoining the warm-up match.
She suffered no ill effects, and said she was raring to start a hectic schedule which includes six internationals against Samoa, Jamaica and Australia before the Silver Ferns defend their Commonwealth Games title in October.
