Sport
A great coach
by Joseph Romanos
Ageless and inspiring, Lois Muir has announced her retirement.
It’s difficult to believe that Lois Muir is 70, just as it’s a shock to hear she has finishing coaching. Muir says this year’s National Bank Cup, during which she coached the Otago Rebels again, was her last. We’ll see.
Her announcement has had me reflecting on her enduring contribution to New Zealand netball. As a 14-year-old from Mataura, she played her first national tournament, for Eastern Southland, in 1949.
The game has changed immensely since, from nine players a side to seven, and from amateur to professional. Muir has taken every change in her stride.
She was the best player (and vice-captain) in the New Zealand team that lost the first world final by one goal to Australia, at Eastbourne, in 1963. She was a rangy goal defence who played in a similar style to Tracey Fear of a later generation.
When she wasn’t playing netball (indoor basketball, it was then), Muir was seven times named in the national basketball tournament team.
Unlike many great players, she was able to transfer her playing ability to coaching. After stints with Otago and a national age team, Muir coached New Zealand from 1974 to ’88 (102 tests), encompassing four world championships. Twice her teams won world titles. Two years is a long time for a coach – her longevity was remarkable.
In 1987, Muir coached the best netball team I’ve seen. Fear, Wai Taumaunu, Leigh Gibbs, Rita Fatialofa, Margaret Forsyth and Margharet Matenga (bolstered by brilliant newcomer Sandra Edge), having suffered defeat in the 1983 world final, were not going to let it happen again. They were extremely self-driven and Muir was wise enough to know she was on to a good thing. She let the players take on much of the decision-making and, sure enough, New Zealand won the world title comfortably.
Since her New Zealand coach days, Muir has had stints with the Shakers and the Rebels. Despite the age gap, she has always related well to her players.
Muir is a verbal person. I once wrote a book with her and, it would be fair to say, her writing skills were unspectacular. She offered several spellings of “peripheral” (as in vision), none close to correct. But when she spoke, she was inspiring. My favourite Muir expression was “the invisible thread”, her description of the bond players have in a truly great team.
For decades, she has been a national sports identity. Her hairstyle has remained unchanged and she has seemed ageless.
New Zealand has had great coaches like Arthur Lydiard, Rusty Robertson, Fred Allen, Duncan Laing and Mike Walsh. Lois Muir has been as good as any.
While on netball, the form of Waikato Magic this season was a boon for a national competition that has long been a Southern Sting benefit.
It’s tempting to say the Magic owed their rise to beanstalk goal shoot Irene van Dyk, perhaps the best ever in that position. Van Dyk certainly has it all: impeccable shooting, sticky hands, great footwork, competitive temperament.
But the Magic, well coached by Noeline Taurua, had strength through the court. Two players especially took my eye – Casey Williams and Laura Langman.
Williams is a world-class defender, comparable with such former greats as Fear and Bernice Mene. And Langman has so much speed and flair she’s like a young Edge. You can’t get higher praise than that.
There have been two notable anniversaries this month. Bruce McLaren, champion Formula One driver and designer, died 35 years ago on June 2 while test driving at Goodwood.
McLaren, who was just 32, was one of three young New Zealanders, along with Denny Hulme and Chris Amon, who took the motor racing world by storm in the 1960s.
He was second in the world Formula One championship in 1960, third in 1962 and third in 1969. It could easily have been McLaren, not Hulme, who became New Zealand’s first Formula One world champion. In 1959, when he won the US Grand Prix, McLaren became the youngest driver, at 22, to win a Formula One race.
McLaren’s fame endures through the team he founded and which still bears his name.
The other noteworthy date was June 4, Walter Hadlee’s 90th birthday.
What an immense contribution Hadlee has made to New Zealand cricket. He played 11 test matches (largely because of World War II, New Zealand played no test cricket for nine years in the middle of his career), and led New Zealand from 1946 to ’51, including during the famous 1949 tour of England.
Hadlee, a meticulous man with a sharp, dry wit, later became the country’s leading cricket administrator. He selected and managed New Zealand sides, and was chairman, president and a life member of the New Zealand Cricket Council.
From the time as a lad that he sat in the Lancaster Park stand and kept his own scorebook of New Zealand’s first official test, against England in 1930, cricket has held a special attraction for Hadlee.
He was ever eager to do the game justice, and he certainly did that, through his deeds and through those of his sons, Richard, Dayle and Barry, who all represented New Zealand.
