2023 Season Preview: Stars
Beaten finalists last year, a solid core of seven returning players for 2023 has given the Robinhood Stars an ideal platform in their drive to be better than before.
Stars coach Kiri Wills didn’t have time to sit and dwell on the loss of experienced defender Kayla Johnson to pregnancy, and is happy with the shape of her mix and associated maturity in the ranks.
“At this stage of the season, you can never replace like with like if you lose someone this late in the piece because everyone of that calibre has been contracted. You can’t worry about it though, these things happen and it’s happened to every single team that I know of in the competition at some stage,” she said.
“I think one of our strengths is the average age mix which is mid to late 20s, so they’ve been around and people like Mila (Reuelu-Buchanan) and Jamie (Hume) are now in our leadership group.
“It’s their time and one of the other players that’s really stood up over the pre-season is Amorangi (Malesala), so every year, they get better. In saying that, so does everyone else but as a unit, we just want to grow in strength and make sure that the whole 10 is really strong.”
After putting it off for the past two years, shooter Hume had major off-season surgery on her damaged shoulder, resulting in a long five months of rehabilitation. She was back with the Stars the week following the pre-season tournament in late February ready to resume contested training.
Gaining valuable experience, the Stars have recruited seasoned midcourter Samon Nathan, who returns to her home city, and imposing defender Kelera Nawai-Caucau for 2023.
“I coached Samon at U23s and I think she’s one of the most under-rated midcourters in the whole competition,” Wills said.
“She can play all three midcourt positions and I like that she’s dogged on defence and on attack, she’s not afraid to let that ball go.
“I’m really excited about her. She’s going to put pressure on the midcourt selections and she’s not here to muck around, so that’s great.
“For Kelera, we obviously wanted to replace the height that we lost with Anna Harrison retiring because you’ve got to have an answer to (opposing shooters) Grace Nweke, Aliyah Dunn and those types of players and in our pre-season against that height, Kelera’s done a very, very good job.
“She takes up a lot of space in the circle and she’s actually very strong, so if you’ve got a lot of pushing and shoving in there, she can generally still stand her ground and not lose position.”
There’s been plenty of soul-searching since last year’s Grand Final and the need to be a little different at times.
“We’ve got a couple of options we can play in terms of game plans.
“In the shooting circle we’re wanting a little bit more mobility and a little less body-on-body, so we want to open that up. We’re not the biggest shooting circle in the competition, so we want to use our ball skills, our speed and our agility.
“We’re looking at changing a few things up. Obviously, not everything went our way last year so we do have to change and adapt, and get better. I’m excited.”