Racing
League
Rugby
Cricket
Golf
Motorsport
Combat Sports
Football
Netball
Basketball
Other Sports
Sport Nation
There's something rotten in the kingdom of Netball New Zealand
Marcus Forbes • October 7th, 2025 8:54 am
Netball NZ CEO Jennie Wyllie and Noeline Taurua back in 2018 | Photo: William Booth/Photosport
In the world of sport there have been countless failures. Some of them more spectacular than others.
Netball New Zealand appears to be trying to set a new benchmark for how to make a mess look way worse than it is.
Every business has employment relations issues. When you work with people there’s always a chance that you’re not always going to get along and sometimes that means there needs to be intervention.
The NNZ players vs coach saga (you can’t call it a scandal) has more seasons than Days Of Our Lives already.
And it appears NNZ management, and the board are either asleep at the wheel, drunk in charge or blissfully wishing it would all just go away so they go back to whatever it was they were doing before 2025 started.
Netball in New Zealand used to hold a spot at the top of the sporting ladder alongside rugby, league and cricket.
Now it’s leaders appear to be battling for recognition, they have struggled to find media partners - for clarity Sport Nation is actually one of the ones who have paid up to be a media partner - battled to keep their best players eligible to play for the Silver Ferns due to their archaic rules, and clearly have missed a lot of points along the way in regards to governance.
There is no one person who can actually be held solely accountable for this.
Netball NZ CEO Jennie Wyllie | Photo: Andrew Cornaga/Photosport
You can’t say it’s the CEO’s fault because she reports to a board, you can’t say it’s the chairman’s fault because he has a board of peers that he sits alongside.
They’re all in the wrong. And that is the scandal, how have they managed to ruin the reputation and credibility of this once strong sport?
But back to the saga.
The rumours have been flying around for weeks now about the breakdown of the relationship between Dame Noeline Taurua and certain members of the playing group.
It’s an employment matter and neither side will want to talk specifics to save themselves extra expense in the long run.
But at the same time NNZ look from the outside to have found every bad option in the PR guidelines for a crisis and decided to follow every one of them.
The latest was to dump a press release the day of an Bledisloe Cup Test, and a Blackcaps-Australia T20 match, announcing that they’re still in mediation and therefore they’ve made no progress with sorting the Dame Noeline situation.
A classic crisis management play there but made by an organization that appears to just be trying to trip itself over with every step they make.
It’s like they just can’t help themselves and just want to watch the whole thing burn.
Wendy Frew responds to the Netball New Zealand drama | Sport Nation Afternoons
I’m no expert, but here’s what I would have done a couple of weeks ago when Sport Nation first broke the news that there was a coach vs players issue.
Firstly, have a press conference the following day and invited the media to attend. Be open and frank - it’s an employment issue and privacy needs to be respected.
The next day, organise a video press conference with the CEO who was overseas. Again, if nothing else, this shows NNZ has this somewhat under control.
Neither of those things happened and now the mess is worse, and shows no signs of getting sorted without having a mass bloodletting session where a lot of people lose their jobs.
There is also clearly a massive split in the playing ranks, but because of the insipid nature of the sport’s leadership this has been left to fester and becoming incredibly septic.
Again, there’s no fix for this now other than dumping a bunch of players or watching your best players leave the game for Australia and/or to play for other countries at New Zealand's expense.
There are no winners to come from this current situation, they could have stopped the bleeding with a bit more leadership but alas there is something rotten in the kingdom of NNZ - excuse the ruining of a brilliant and famous Shakespeare line.
Sumo reacts to Grace Nweke's call for Dame Noeline's return | Scotty & Izzy
