South Africa coach Norma Plummer plots Diamonds’ demise

She might be an old girl now, but Norma Plummer won’t bow out without giving the Aussies a good shake.

Norma Plummer will retire as a netball coach from Monday. Picture: Sarah Reed

She might be an old girl now, but Norma Plummer won’t bow out without giving the Aussies a good shake.

There’s an obvious irony that the woman who coached the Diamonds to two Netball World Cup titles in 2007 and 2011, and whose legacy remained for their 2015 triumph, would now like to cut the green-and-gold’s campaign short.

If Plummer’s South Africa do so in tonight’s semi-final it will mean Australia will miss out on a top-two finish for the first time in the tournament’s history.

How she’ll achieve such a seemingly improbable feat is a subject on which the sharp-witted septuagenarian is coy.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Plummer said. “You’ll just have to watch, won’t you.

“We have a damn good rest Friday and make sure we’ve got fresh legs, and then Monday morning — I mean Saturday morning — just have a bit of a walk-through.”

The date slip, Plummer assures, has nothing to do with the fact Monday is the first day of her retirement, the dropping of the curtain on a playing and coaching career stretching back to 1967.

In the last four years she’s led a netball revolution in South Africa and guided the national team to the World Cup semis in Liverpool for the first time since 1995.

And where most are expecting an Australia versus England final, Plummer refuses to underestimate a rejuvenated New Zealand under mentor Noeline Taurua.

“That’s a toss of the coin,” she said. “Because England looked fantastic against us but that won’t happen on Saturday, I think New Zealand will cover all those gaps so it could be anyone’s game.”

Then there’s her own team, fifth in the world up against first but with nothing to lose.

There are factors in the SPAR Proteas’ favour.

Like the way Telkom, the sponsor of South Africa’s national netball league, has offered each player 1 million Rand ($102,000) if they bring home the trophy and R500,000 ($51,000) if they finish runners up.

And how defensive unit Karla Pretorius and Phumza Maweni play together at Sunshine Coast Lightning.

That’s offset by the fact only one other player, Melbourne Vixens’ Ine-Marí Venter, plies her trade in the world’s premier Super Netball league.

“We have a hell of a lot of players not over there,” Plummer said.

“England’s players, every single one, have been in the Suncorp League or the ANZ for a long time so they know what it’s all about.

“It does make a difference. The best competition in the world they’re playing in every week.”

But tough, according to Diamonds coaching successor Lisa Alexander, is exactly what Plummer, “the ultimate competitor”, is.

And one who’s not shutting the door completely on netball, leaving a sliver of space for mentoring roles but keen to hand over the reins at the start of a new World Cup cycle ahead of the 2023 edition in Cape Town.

“They’ve got to put their own coach in,” she said. “They’ve got world champs in 2023, so if they don’t do it now I don’t think that’s fair on the coach who takes over.

“I can guarantee you there’s talent there, but that talent really needs to be worked.

“It’s nowhere near the level you’d want it. But over four years that would be that coach’s job.

“I mean, they want me to stick around. I said I’m happy to mentor. But I’m an old girl now, I think I need a break. My voice has been going.

“I’ll be 75 at the end of the year, I think I’ve had a pretty good run, don’t you?”

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH