Nigel Si­mon

Dr Pa­tri­cia Butch­er has hint­ed at the ap­point­ment of for­mer Aus­tralian net­ball and New Zealand as­sis­tant coach, Vick­ie Wil­son as Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor to the T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion in the near fu­ture.

Butch­er made this dis­clo­sure while ad­dress­ing a small gath­er­ing at a wel­come re­cep­tion held for the T&T "Ca­lyp­so Girls" from the 14th Net­ball World Cup which end­ed in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia on Sun­day.

The func­tion which last­ed lit­tle over an hour was held on the team's ar­rival home at the VIP Lounge, Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Tues­day morn­ing.

Com­ment­ing on the ninth placed fin­ish in the 16-team com­pe­ti­tion, by the Joelisa Coop­er cap­tained T&T women, Butch­er said the team was ca­pa­ble of do­ing great things, but need­ed help.

She said, "Our team pos­sess­es the nec­es­sary net­ball tal­ent to get back at the top, but the as­so­ci­a­tion does not even have the tech­ni­cal per­son that can take us there."

"I'm not say­ing this to pull down any­one in T&T, but if we as a sport have to ad­vance in terms of mod­ern and sci­en­tif­ic tech­niques, we need as­sis­tance at the high­est lev­el.

"So while in Aus­tralia my dis­cus­sions were with peo­ple like Vick­ie Wil­son, a for­mer top Aus­tralian net­ball cap­tain and play­er, who served as the as­sis­tant coach of the New Zealand team at the just con­clud­ed World Cup and she is will­ing to come down here and as­sist us."

Butch­er made it clear that should the 50-year-old Wil­son, a three-time world cham­pi­on (1991, 1995, 1999) be ap­point­ed she ex­pect no fric­tion with cur­rent na­tion­al coach, Wes­ley "Pepe" Gomes.

As a for­mer Aus­tralian Di­a­monds cap­tain, Wil­son is one of net­ball's most suc­cess­ful play­ers with three World Cham­pi­onship gold medals and one Com­mon­wealth Games gold medal to her cred­it.

She played for the Aus­tralian na­tion­al net­ball side for fif­teen years and was award­ed the Or­der of Aus­tralia Medal in 1992.

Af­ter re­tir­ing in 1999, Wil­son has forged a suc­cess­ful ca­reer coach­ing at an elite lev­el, most re­cent­ly with the Queens­land Fire­birds from 2006, con­tin­u­ing in the ANZ Cham­pi­onship for two years un­til the 2009 sea­son.

With re­gards to the ex­pect­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween both coach­es Butch­er added, " "Pepe" has al­ready told us that he is will­ing to get as­sis­tance from the high­est lev­el and we have had be­fore this two oth­er Aus­tralians who have as­sist­ed us in the past with Gov­ern­ment's help and I am ap­peal­ing to Gov­ern­ment at this time to give us the as­sis­tance once more, and we cer­tain­ly will be able to achieve the high­est po­ten­tial in net­ball."

Over the years, T&T has had the ben­e­fit of two for­mer Aus­tralian as Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tors.

First in 2007, for­mer Aus­tralian na­tion­al play­er Sharon Finnan was ap­point­ed by then T&TNA pres­i­dent Austrid Rochford to pre­pare the "Ca­lyp­so Girls" for the 2007 World Net­ball Cham­pi­onship (WNC) in New Zealand where it placed 11th, its worst ever fin­ish.

Then in 2010, Butch­er ap­point­ed Aus­tralian tech­ni­cal con­sul­tant Karen Wor­land, a cred­it­ed Lev­el Three High Per­for­mance Net­ball Coach­ing for a one year stint.

World was re­spon­si­ble for ba­sic en­try coach ed­u­ca­tion de­vel­op­ment, as well as prepar­ing the na­tion­al squads for the 2011 Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tions (AF­NA) World Cham­pi­onships Qual­i­fy­ing Tour­na­ment in St Lu­cia and the 2010 Com­mon­wealth Games.

She even­tu­al­ly re­turned to Aus­tralia while T&T with Grace Parkin­son Grif­fith at the helm end­ed sev­enth at the Sin­ga­pore 2011 Net­ball World Cup, its best fin­ish since 1995, Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land.

MORE IN­FO

Vic­ki Wil­son

Per­son­al in­for­ma­tion

Born: Feb­ru­ary 11, 1965 (age 50)

Bris­bane, Aus­tralia

Uni­ver­si­ty: Queens­land Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy

Net­ball ca­reer

Play­ing po­si­tion(s): Goal Shoot

Net­ball World Cham­pi­onships

Gold medal: 1999 Christchurch; Gold medal: 1995 Birm­ing­ham; Gold medal: 1991 Syd­ney; Sil­ver medal: 1987 Glas­gow

Com­mon­wealth Games

Gold medal: 1998 Kuala Lumpur

Coach­ing His­to­ry

Coach­ing ac­cred­i­ta­tion

High Per­for­mance Coach 2006 (Net­ball Aus­tralia)