Centenary Feature: Southern Sting

Former Southland Times editor Nathan Burdon had a courtside seat for one of the great dynasties of New Zealand sport, the phenomenon which was the Southern Sting era. Along with seven national titles in 10 years, the champion netball team captured the hearts of a struggling province and was a trailblazer for women’s sport.

This is the story of a team which inspired a community badly in need of inspiration. Not for a week, or a month, or a season, but for 10 rowdy years.

Sports writing thrives on hyperbole but unless you were a part of it then, it’s hard to do that time justice now. But it’s worth a try.

First, the numbers. Robyn Broughton’s Southern Sting netball team dominated the sport’s first foray into professionalism.

The team played in all 10 finals of a competition which started under the banner of a soft drink company in 1998 and finished under a bank’s prancing horse logo in 2007. Of those 10 finals appearances, Sting won seven titles, including six in a row from 1999 to 2004.

If you want to pick a moment in time for Sting’s genesis story, then a phone call from Lee Piper to Bernice Mene is as good a place as any.

At the time Piper had a passing involvement in Southland Country netball, and had sparked a discussion about broadening the Team Southland concept, an initiative aimed at getting businesses to help bolster the playing ranks of the Southland rugby team.

Southland netball had ambitions of promotion into first division and having a club team included in the earlier version of the Coca-Cola Cup. Unfortunately, the Cup (so to speak) was full. To get a look in, a Southland club needed to relegate the lowest-ranked South Island team, which at the time was a powerful St Nicholas side.

Southland needed something special and set its sights on netball star Bernice Mene who was already on the way to becoming a Silver Ferns great and had played for Canterbury and Wellington before shifting to Dunedin to study at Teachers College.

Most assumed, especially the good netball folk of Dunedin, that she would be playing for Otago. Piper took a punt.

“I just gave her a ring,” he says.

After negotiating with Mene’s “truly terrifying” manager Glenda Hughes, Mene became an honorary Southlander, later to become one of the province’s favourite daughters as she led the Sting to four national titles.

Mene asked Piper if he’d heard of a young talent coming through the ranks of Canterbury netball by the name of Donna Wilkins (nee Loffhagen).

Piper hadn’t, but he wasn’t about to ignore a recommendation from Mene. Canterbury NPC captain Tasha Hansen (nee Marshall) and Camille O’Connor (nee Grubb) were signed up and Julie Carter had propitiously already moved south.

Southland was also blessed with some solid local talent with the likes of Kirsty Broughton, Debbie Munro, Jo Tapper and Reinga Bloxham.

With the Coca-Cola Cup evolving into a franchise competition in 1998, the deep south had assembled a team which was sneaky good. However, they didn’t have a proper stadium, didn’t technically have the playing numbers required for a franchise licence and hadn’t won a national title since 1959.

The Sting won their first three games in that maiden 1998 season, knocking over the Auckland Diamonds (home), Canterbury Flames (away) and Waikato Wildcats (home). It was the sort of sporting success which locals quickly developed a thirst for. By way of comparison, the Southland rugby team would win only two NPC games that year, and suffered an 88-point Ranfurly Shield loss to Waikato.

Tickets to Sting games at Centennial Hall, a drafty and archaic barn used twice a year by the neighbouring A&P Association, were becoming the hottest in town. A black market for netball tickets sprang up almost overnight. Health and safety aficionados please look away - patrons were encouraged to slide along the bench seats to allow more people in before games started. It was a simpler time.

One major problem, though. The team’s best player couldn’t play there. More accurately, Bernice Mene’s knees couldn’t cope with the venue’s asphalt floor. The Sting approached the Invercargill Licensing Trust and its president Ray Harper, petitioning the community funder for a wooden, sprung floor. And so, it was done.

“Harps” came to love that team, so much so that they earned the sobriquet in some quarters of “Ray’s Girls”. Again, it was a simpler time. But he wasn’t the only one. The Southland netball public, already the most educated in the country, finally had a team to support that was as consistent and impactful as a southern squall.

Grizzled farmers, from Tokanui to Tuatapere to Tapanui, could debate the finer points of the game as though it was their Mastermind speciality.

Put all this against a backdrop of a proud province which had fallen on tough times. By the late 1990s Southland was in the economic and social doldrums following a downturn in the agricultural sector and significant business closures including the Ocean Beach freezing works.

However, as the century turned, Southland’s relatively lower land values prompted a dairy farming boom which would engender renewed confidence, boosted by the visionary SIT Zero Fees initiative and the colourful mayorship of Sir Tim Shadbolt.

While not the only factor, the confidence and momentum created by the Sting phenomenon played a role in the decision to build ILT Stadium Southland, which opened in 2000. The previous year some 20,000 Southlanders braved the cold as the Sting were feted with a ticker-tape parade after beating the hated Otago Rebels in Dunedin.

That 1999 final, a rematch of the inaugural final 12 months before, featured a famous border raid which has become part of Southland sporting folklore.

Southern TeamCo believed their fans were being locked out of the final by the Rebels, so encouraged a bunch of former Verdon College schoolmates who were studying in Dunedin to camp overnight outside the ticket office at Carisbrook and buy as many tickets as they could get away with.

It was a masterstroke, a move which arguably set the tone for a franchise ahead of its time. Southern TeamCo developed a strong focus on the fan experience, before that became a buzzword. Community engagement? Sting players, no matter where they had come from, were a genuine part of the community. And the Southern TeamCo board earned a reputation for testing the limits on rules which they believed needed to be challenged.

That included taking a disruptive approach to recruitment. Cynics would suggest the franchise, backed by community funding, bought teams and titles, but that narrative ignores some of the facts around what community funding can and can’t be used for.

However, Southern TeamCo did aggressively reach out to players that super-coach Robyn Broughton identified. But those players also wanted to play for “Robbie”. Netballers liked being treated like the elite athletes they were, even if their remuneration was little more than costs plus some extras.

When other franchises looked to compete, the player market changed. Ultimately the profile of netball, and women’s sport in general, benefited immensely from the Sting’s ability to get on the front page.

What can we say about Robyn Broughton? The three-time Southland Sports Awards coach of the year, who passed away in 2023, was simply revered.

Wendy Frew, who was selected as a 17-year-old high schooler by Broughton in 2002, describes Broughton as a “tremendous coach who demanded excellence and put a premium on doing the basics well. She was also amazing at thinking outside the square.”

But there was also the personal side.

“She was like a second mum to me. She always had my back and she cared about you as a person ahead of being a player. That’s really important when you are going through high school and you are spending a lot of time on the road. She was always making sure that I was keeping up with my school work but she’d also try and make sure I could get an extension if I needed it.”

Broughton had a great sense of fun and would have her players in hysterics at times, especially after losing her bag or drink bottle for the umpteenth time. She would open her home to players, with the likes of Tania Dalton and Adine Wilson regular housemates.

After game functions at the Broughton household were something to look forward to, although Broughton’s professionalism made for strict rules around drinking, something that was formative for a young player like Frew.

“It was special to come into a team which knew how to win. She didn’t always pick the best players, she wanted to pick players who would fit the environment.”

Dropped balls at training were not tolerated. When Broughton couldn’t understand why a couple players were becoming serial offenders, she insisted that they get their eyes tested and it turned out that they needed to get glasses.

“She was a very special coach and I miss her a lot,” Frew said.

Donna Wilkins and Broughton shared arguably the most impactful coach/player partnership we’ve seen in New Zealand domestic sport.

“Robbie brought a lot of knowledge and passion. She was always striving to be better and always hunting out the latest netball news,” Wilkins said.

“Her ability to mould a team that always wanted to win for her first and (themselves) second was incredible. She had such an amazing way with athletes which seemed to bring out the best in us all. And, of course, she added her humour into the mix.

“The years of the Southern Sting were unbelievable. Not only the netball but the community vibe and support during those years can never be forgotten. Finals every year and seven titles, all with Robbie at the helm coaching us,” she said.

The franchise’s influence in the community could sometimes steer towards, shall we say, the mischievous.

Not many people have heard about the time Lee Piper was despatched to meet the Northern Force team at Invercargill airport ahead of an important playoff game. He’s not sure why anyone would choose him to perform such a task.

With the wind and rain lashing the terminal, Piper convinced airport staff to inform the pilot of the Force’s plane that the airbridge was out of commission and they would have to park about 50m away on the tarmac. By the time the players made it to shelter they were cold, wet and bedraggled. Welcome to Invercargill.

After winning their first title in 1999, the Sting went unbeaten in 2000, including a 48-44 semi-final win over the Force and a 43-40 victory in the final against the Flames. It was the first of three consecutive final victories over the Christchurch team and the beginning of a brilliant rivalry between Robyn Broughton and her Canterbury counterpart Marg Foster.

The Sting beat the Flames 47-44 in the 2001 final and were presented with the decommissioned Coca-Cola Cup, but a change in sponsor was no help for the Flames, with the Sting winning the 2002 National Bank Cup final 54-48.

The 2003 season saw the Sting suffer a 50-48 round-robin loss to the Rebels in Dunedin, which they avenged with a 56-43 semi-final win at home, before seeing off the Force in a narrow 51-49 win in the final.

The following year the Sting dropped their final round-robin game, to the Force, before seeing off the Flames twice (major semi-final, final) in the play-offs.

It was always going to take a special side to bring down Rome’s walls. After the inaugural season of the competition, Waikato and Bay of Plenty had merged to form the Magic, and a Noeline Taurua-coached team which included Amigene Metcalfe, Irene van Dyk, Casey Kopua (nee Williams), Laura Langman and Joline Johansson (nee Henry) finally ended Sting’s dominance, winning finals against them at ILT Stadium Southland and Mystery Creek in 2005 and 2006.

In the final season before New Zealand’s domestic competition expanded into a trans-Tasman championship, the Sting began their 2007 campaign without Belinda Colling (who would assist Broughton from the bench), Tania Dalton, Anna Galvan and Lesley Rumball.

The Jenny Ferguson-led Sting team still included plenty of talent with the likes of Liana Leota, Adine Wilson, Daneka Tuineau (nee Wipiiti), Megan Hutton, Natalie Avellino and the talismanic Donna Wilkins.

The Sting lost to the Force in the opening round but finished the round-robin on top of the ladder and earned the right to host the Force in the major semi-final. Shockingly, Catherine Latu and Megan Anderson (Dehn) out shot Wilkins and Tuineau to secure an eight-goal win.

That forced the Sting to host recent nemesis the Magic in a preliminary final in Invercargill where, despite van Dyk landing 40 goals from 42 attempts, the Sting held on for a 48-46 win.

The final game of New Zealand netball’s pioneering foray into professionalism saw Broughton and good friend Yvonne Willering squaring off from the sidelines of the North Shore Events Centre’s parquet floor.

Watching the game today you can’t help but be dragged into the drama as commentators Brendan Telfer and Julie Coney try to make themselves heard over the bedlam. The Sting fans who had made the trip on a Tony Laker chartered flight couldn’t make a dent in that home crowd cacophony.

The netball is fast and clinical. It wouldn’t be out of place 17 years later. The Force had won the second and third quarters but still found themselves trailing narrowly. With five minutes to go they turn Sting possession over and then Latu scores from the next centre pass to put the Force ahead for the first time in the game.

With 2:24sec left, Anderson steps onto her left foot to shoot closer to the hoop, and into the shadow of Megan Hutton’s long left arm. At the last moment she opts to pass the ball back out, but instead of finding Temepara Bailey at the top of the circle, the ball rockets into the welcoming arms of Leota. The Sting score, and score again off their own centre pass to edge ahead by two. It’s all they need. It is Robyn Broughton’s 100th game in charge of the Southern Sting. She shakes her head as she wanders the court in disbelief, finally falling into the arms of Adine Wilson.

It’s history, and it’s over, but in the south we remember. The Sting dynasty helped invigorate a province and change the way many people thought about women’s sport.

All time Southern Sting starting seven:

GS: Tania Dalton

GA: Donna Wilkins

WA: Adine Wilson

C: Lesley Rumball

WD: Wendy Frew

GD: Bernice Mene (c)

GK: Megan Hutton

Coach: Robyn Broughton

Manager: Kate Mackintosh

Physio: Neil Familton

Sports science: Steve Jackson