After 51 bruising days, Dame Noeline Taurua was reinstated as Silver Ferns coach and the sport appeared to move on. Yet the uneasy truce that brought her back is already under strain, with fresh legal exchanges and lingering mistrust hinting that the deeper issues inside New Zealand netball are far from resolved. Dana Johannsen reports.

The air inside the High Performance Sport NZ boardroom was heavy with fatigue and frustration.

It had been a tense and at times combative meeting, but as talks between officials and Silver Ferns coach Dame Noeline Taurua stretched towards evening there was finally a sense progress was being made.

Around the table were Silver Ferns management, Netball NZ top brass, High Performance Sport NZ officials, player representatives, and a smattering of lawyers.

Somewhere in the middle hung the future of the Silver Ferns programme.

Taurua and her coaching team were supposed to be in camp with the squad preparing for the Taini Jamison series against South Africa - the first in a busy 2025 international season for the Ferns. But, an escalating dispute behind closed doors forced the camp to be pushed back two days while the parties convened for a crisis meeting.

Months earlier, a group of up to seven players had raised concerns about the team environment, prompting Netball NZ to commission a 'cultural review'. But Taurua and her coaching team of Debbie Fuller and Briony Akle pushed back, forcefully rejecting the findings and the process of the review.

Now, with the international season bearing down upon them, an urgent resolution was sought.

So, on September 5, the parties gathered at High Performance Sport NZ's headquarters on Auckland's North Shore to hash out the issues.

Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly

According to sources on both sides of the divide, by late afternoon there seemed to be consensus around the table on the changes to be implemented.

It was agreed that former All Blacks team manager Darren Shand and Silver Ferns great Tracey Fear would join the Ferns camp for the South Africa series as additional support for the players.

What happened next is where the accounts diverge.

According to Taurua's camp, the coaching staff were willing to meet all the conditions proposed and had even "co-designed" a player safeguarding plan, only for Netball NZ board chair Matt Whineray to "pull the rug out" from underneath them at the 11th hour.

However, multiple other sources said it was Taurua who abruptly backtracked, after the issue of how the changes would be communicated to the players was discussed.

"She said something like 'no, I'm not feeling it eh, I'm not feeling it in my wairua [soul]'," recalls one insider.

"[Whineray] was basically pleading with her, he goes 'Noeline, we're almost there'."

But the deadlock held.

What began as a discrete cultural review was about to explode into one of the biggest controversies in New Zealand netball history.

Without a resolution, Netball NZ bosses were forced to cancel the Ferns' camp while behind the scenes they scrambled to come up with a plan.

Five days later, the national body made the shock announcement Taurua and her coaching team had been stood down for the South Africa series.

For a sport less familiar with being at the top of the news bulletins, the public reaction hit hard. Not only did the public take notice, they also took sides.

A 51-day public standoff played out against a backdrop of feverish media coverage and social media campaigns.

Finally, late last month, Taurua was reinstated as