Well, at least that is what the Legends discovered when they played the Steel at the Edgar Centre on Saturday afternoon.
The ANZ Championship side proved too fit, too fast and too polished for the NZNPA's Legends, winning the warm-up game 71-42.
But for 10 glorious minutes, the Legends led the Steel and were quickly adopted by a crowd of about 800 as the favourites.
Former Silver Fern Adine Wilson looked as though she could slot back into top-level netball at a moment's notice. Her passing game was as immaculate as ever.
Shooters Tania Dalton and Angela Mitchell have somehow escaped the ageing process and Jenny-May Coffin still had plenty of her old hustle.
But the gap between the classy touches started to stretch when the legs began to tire. The Steel finished the opening quarter strongly to take a 19-14 lead into the break.
An unanswered 11-goal scoring spree in the second quarter saw the margin balloon to 43-21 at halftime.
Steel shooter Jhaniele Fowler was impossible to defend and used all of her 1.98m frame to present an easy target.
A fit-looking Steel captain Jodi Brown put in a flawless performance. She must have made more than a dozen assists by halftime, flinging passes to Fowler from all over the court. It was magic to watch.
The Steel will definitely strike tougher defence - to be fair to the Legends, they had not even had a practice run together - but the combination between Brown and Fowler was heartening and bodes well for the future.
When Fowler took a seat on the bench for the third quarter, the gulf between the two sides narrowed.
When she came back on, in the fourth quarter, the Legends opted to employ an eighth player for the last 5min of the match. Even with three defenders in the defensive circle, getting the ball to Fowler was about as tricky as ordering a pizza.
Fowler scored 43 of her 47 attempts but Brown was the standout. Her shooting statistics were not as impressive but she ran the court and set the tempo.
If you were thinking the Steel might battle to avoid the wooden spoon this season, you can upgrade your expectations.
The team, Brown said, was targeting a top-six finish.
''We are pleased with the way we are going,'' she said.
''We know there are a few things we need to tweak. We just need to make sure we keep growing.
''But I think we are tracking all right. Don't get me wrong - it is going to be a hard season. We want to hit top six. We think we can get into the top half of the competition and I think that will be a bonus with the team we've got.
''We have to be realistic in the fact we have some young players compared to a team like the Magic, who have been together for seasons. We're relatively raw in that sense.''
The task of making the top six should be that much easier if the combination between Brown and Fowler continues to improve. As far as getting the ball to someone who is almost 2m tall, it is not always as easy as you would think.
''Technically, with a girl that height, you shouldn't have a problem getting her the ball. But it has been a work in progress.
''The first training, I thought, `Oh my God'. But it has come along really easily.''
