Dame Noeline Taurua is fighting for a back-to-back win as the Silver Fern’s head coach at the Netball World Cup in South Africa this month – also marking more than three years of her having her damehood.
But before she was made a dame, Taurua and her whānau had always been against investiture titles.
“We had always been one of those families that would read the newspaper and go, ‘Oh what has he done? What has she done? “she says.
But since becoming a dame, Noeline has come to realise the perks it offers.
“You can get into places. You can do things. You can say things more than if I didn’t have that. It’s a crazy thing but it’s just how it is,” she said.
Dad well known for challenging the Crown
Her father, Kingi Taurua, died before she received her damehood. He died in May 2018 at 80 from cancer. He was a respected Ngāpuhi elder, Vietnam War veteran, an advisor to the government and an award-winning broadcaster, well-known too for challenging the Crown.
“I always think that Mum and Dad would be proud and that they know that it’s not just about me. It’s about them, it’s about the whānau and I’m still working in sports,” Taurua says.
In a 2016 interview, her father said he thought he might have been a hindrance to his daughter’s career because of his own attitude towards policies and government issues.
“I see a lot of players getting New Year’s honours, Queen’s Birthday honours and some coaches getting those kind of things but Noeline doesn’t seem to get one and I often wondered whether I am to blame for that.”
Three months after Kingi died, his daughter was named head coach of the Silver Ferns. The next year she led the Silver Ferns to a World Cup victory.
“Even though he’s not alive, I still hear him - if I’ve got to be honest - barking away or saying what he wants to say,” Taurua says.Humour, respect and fighing
She remembers her father as an orator.
“In my eyes, I’ve always seen him in the marae as an orator, and how you could add humour but add messages and eloquence to the kōrero, how you can respect everybody who is there and also be prepared to get up there and have a fight all at the same time,” she says.
“I’ve grown up in that and even though I don’t do it in a marae setting, I do it in my setting, which is around sports, around board tables and not being afraid.”
Noeline says she and the Silver Ferns feel the pressure to perform at the World Cup.
She says they are, “backing ourselves in regards to our strategy, about who we are as a team, about who we represent and knowing once again that that’s the landscape that we go into that. The opposition are there to nullify us, well don’t let them. We’re ready physically but it’s our mental that we’ve got to prepare ourselves, to go in and be really strong on that.”
She’s tough, focused and runs a tight ship but if anyone can retain the World Cup, it will be the highly respected, down-to-earth dame from the North.