Opinion - You can be treated to some absolute codswallop in this business. Stories and opinions so absurd as to leave you almost breathless in disbelief.
I'll give you an example.
It was written, recently, that the Silver Ferns netball team was flourishing, as a result of its players appearing in the domestic ANZ Premiership.
Dame Noeline Taurua talks to her team during 2022 Quad Series. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Never mind how inferior it is to its trans-Tasman predecessor, in terms of fitness, skill level, personnel, intensity and pressure, our local comp is allegedly far better than what's being dished up in Australia.
New Zealand are the Netball World Cup holders, after all, which is all the proof you need. Never mind how many of that 2019 team were tried and tested in the furnace of trans-Tasman franchise netball or then went and played in Australia's domestic competition subsequently.
No, the Silver Ferns are world champs and also beat the Diamonds 3-1 in a series here earlier last year. You want evidence that the domestic ANZ Premiership has made New Zealand the pre-eminent team in world netball? There it is.
Only it didn't look like that at the just-completed Quad Series event in London, where the Silver Ferns were handily beaten by Australia and England, before concluding their campaign with a one-goal win over South Africa.
This, hard on the heels of a loss in their most recent series, against England in Christchurch in September.
I have no quarrel with the Silver Ferns and certainly not their outstanding head coach Noeline Taurua. I might argue that Taurua has her years coaching the Waikato-Bay of Plenty Magic in the old trans-Tasman comp - then Sunshine Coast in Australia's Super Netball league - for a degree of that prowess, but I wouldn't question her ability.
But what I can't cop is this notion that playing lesser netball makes for better netballers.
I had the good fortune to cover the Central Pulse during a good chunk of their trans-Tasman years. Back then, the team were flat out winning one game a season.
The bar for competitiveness was at one level and the Pulse's quality and performances some distance below that.
But they went hard in the recruitment market - and even harder on the practice court - to eventually make themselves credible opposition. They still weren't all that good, but at least made significant progress towards ascending to the standards set by Australia's better sides and Taurua's Magic.
As an aside, not enough is made of what Taurua and women such as Irene van Dyk, Laura Langman and Casey Kopua did in leading the Magic to their one trans-Tasman title. The competition was so fierce and Australia's players so physical, that claiming that crown must rate as just about the finest achievement of any of their careers.
The calibre of import New Zealand's franchises were able to attract then was phenomenal. Now international stars such as Jhaniele Fowler, Mwai Kumwenda, Jo Harten and Lenize Potgeiter happily ditch our shores for Australia's.
I couldn't see how moving out of the trans-Tasman competition would help New Zealand. I put it to people such as Kopua and suggested that surely the Silver Ferns would struggle on the international stage, when New Zealand went it alone after the 2016 season.
The fact I was wrong - at least in the short term - again speaks volumes for Kopua and Langman, along with teammates such as Katrina Rore, Maria Folau and Ameliaranne Ekenasio.
Only New Zealand doesn't boast anything like that calibre of player now. How could they?
The ANZ Premiership has become a competition in which depth is threadbare and fitness standards aren't what they were. Stars, such as Grace Nweke, emerge straight from school, without being battle-hardened the way previous shooters such as Donna Wilkins were.
To see how Wilkins and Joline Henry competed for the Pulse, often for little return, was to see what toughness and perseverance was. You can't tell me that lack of franchise competition isn't hurting the Silver Ferns now.
Taurua will continue to drive them. She'll demand higher standards from the leaders in her squad, but the problem remains that they'll then go back to a domestic competition in which their teammates are a long way from world class.
Back in the trans-Tasman days, New Zealand teams were still taken aback by the intensity of the Australian ones. They'd concede the first quarter something like 12-5 and rarely be able to claw their way back.
Even though they were playing Australians every other week, that physicality literally still took our players' breath away.
So don't tell me, as a recent news article did, that the Silver Ferns are flourishing on a diet of domestic netball. Don't tell me that Australia's competition is over-rated and more about money than elite competition. Don't tell me that all is in readiness for this year's Commonwealth Games campaign and the 2023 World Cup defence.
The Silver Ferns looked second or third-rate in this Quad Series and, no matter what anyone involved with netball in New Zealand says, they can't pretend they didn't fear this day was coming.
