No 14: Lois Muir coaches Silver Ferns to world title (1987)
How to sum up the great Lois Muir's contribution to Otago sport in one "moment"?
Simply impossible.
She is not known as the godmother of New Zealand netball for no reason.
As a player, an official, an administrator and, most of all, a coach, she has made an immense contribution to the sport.
Few sports coaches are honoured with a title as grand as Dame, but you will never find someone arguing she does not deserve that title.
Muir's greatest achievement in netball was coaching the Silver Ferns from 1974 to 1988.
She won world titles in 1979 (shared) and 1987, and finished with the remarkable record of 102 games, 87 wins, five draws and just 10 losses.
The 1987 team is considered arguably New Zealand's greatest netball side.
The world championships, the last to be played outdoors, were in Glasgow that year, and the Silver Ferns were highly motivated after having to share the 1979 title with Australia and Trinidad and Tobago, losing the 1983 final by five goals to Australia, and losing five of six games against their transtasman rivals in 1986.
Muir had built a talented team, with captain Leigh Gibbs, Tracey Fear, Margaret Forsyth, Sandra Edge, Margharet Matenga, Waimarama Taumaunu, Rita Fatialofa, Julie Townsend and Tracey Earl forming a deep and dangerous squad.
The Silver Ferns opened with an 89-8 crushing of Bermuda, and finished pool play with a 45-30 win over England.
They then beat Australia (39-28), England again (47-37) and Trinidad and Tobago (49-37) to seal the title.
Muir later told The New Zealand Herald the world championships demanded a major lift in focus every four years.
"The world championships are different altogether; it's about running a total race," she said.
"It's keeping everyone fit and making sure you've planned for everything so there are no hiccups along the way."
Muir was a pioneer, and was probably the first netball coach to do intensive video analysis to help formulate a game plan.
"Before the world championships we had Margaret Forsyth and Margy Matenga, who were the greatest shooting combination in the world, but the Australians had analysed them a wee bit and seen what they liked to do together," Muir told the Dominion Post.
"One of the conscious decisions I made before the championships was that I was not going to play those two together. That was really sad for me but because we were in auto pilot. It became an achilles heel.
"Those were the things I used to look at on the video, what we were doing and where we were going. I would look at other people but also at ourselves."
Muir was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. The 1987 team was accorded the same honour in 1996.
Muir gave plenty back to netball after standing down as Silver Ferns coach in 1988.
She coached the Capital Shakers from 1998 to 2001, Wellington in 1998-99 and the Otago Rebels in 2002-03; she was named New Zealand netball's coach of the century; and she served as the national president.
There is even a national competition named for her, with teams competing in the Lois Muir Challenge as a feeder to the ANZ Championship.
Muir, who still lives in Dunedin, has also been involved with the Hall of Fame, the Hillary Commission, the Academy of Sport and the Masters Games. Most recently, she was a volunteer at the Rugby World Cup.
