Bloxham: 'I did a lot of soul-searching and questioned myself'
In an open and honest interview on The Roar Podcast Southern Steel coach Reinga Bloxham talked frankly about one of the toughest periods in her coaching career last year.
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Reinga Bloxham admits to a moment last year when she pondered whether Southern Steel would be better off with someone else in charge.
In an open and honest interview on The Roar Podcast, Steel coach talked frankly about one of the toughest periods in her coaching career. She also provided some insight around the relief attached to ending a 21-game losing stretch with a victory over the Stars in Invercargill on Saturday.
On March 13 last year, the Steel was thumped 74-30 by the Stars in Auckland which sparked the moment of doubt for Bloxham.
“We got an absolute hammering… At that point, I thought, ‘Ah oh, things are not good’.
“Do we know how to play netball? “Do I know how to coach? What’s going on here?” Bloxham said in The Roar Podcast interview.
“That week I did a lot of soul-searching and really questioned myself if I was the right person to be in the job or should someone else come in.”
But Bloxham is no coaching rookie. Her CV includes being at the helm of the Steel in 2017 when the team went on an unbeaten 21-game run and won a national title.
Bloxham and the Steel backed that up in 2018 with a second straight ANZ Premiership title.
“I thought, hang on a minute, we have been successful in the past, I do know what I am talking about. I checked in with a few people and just refocused.”
“[You] go into the season wanting to win that big shiny trophy, and last year when we got to the point when we knew that wasn’t going to be in the question it was somewhere I had never been before.
“It was quite an interesting process for me to go through. To be able to refocus and reset your goals. That really helped me refocus and show up every week with the same energy and passion whether I was winning a trophy or not, the trophy just looked different.”
Instead for Bloxham, it was about finding different sorts of coaching victories, such as improving stats, building depth, and simply doing your job better
“When we got into that season, and we were still losing, but the margins were decreasing, and our performances were improving, that was enough to keep me interested and keep me turning up and keep me positive. Just like I normally would whether I was fighting for a trophy or not.”
A winless 2023 campaign also sharpened the focus for the 2024 ANZ Premiership for Bloxham.
“There was a real hunger for me that I didn’t want to finish coaching knowing that I’d lost 15 games in a row. I thought, gee, I wouldn’t probably pick up another coaching gig to be fair.
“So going into this season I looked at what I learned from last season, and for me it was about keeping things really simple and sort of filtering down the information and making sure it was simplistic and clear. That has been my focus this season, that I’m coaching to the best of my ability.”
Steel didn’t start 2024 with its most polished performance in a 52-35 loss to the Tactix, before a couple of tight losses to the Mystics and Pulse.
It was all set up for Saturday in an attempt to snap a 713-day ANZ Premiership-losing streak with a victory over the Stars at ILT Stadium Southland in Invercargill.
Coaches endlessly talk about focusing on the process rather than the outcome in sport.
But in some part, Bloxham and the Steel ripped up that playbook heading into the showdown with the Stars.
“We put a lot of pressure going into that week about winning. When you haven’t won for that long you question whether you know how to finish out a game.
“Our focus - which goes against a lot of things I stand for - I spoke about winning more times last week than we probably have in the seven or eight years I’ve been coaching.
“[Mental skills coach] Jason McKenzie led us through a communication session which was all about winning, us acknowledging that’s what we want to do and communicating that.
“There was this massive focus around it and I think that’s what made me quite nervous on game day. We had talked about it so much I thought we have to actually put this into action now.
“But I’m pleased we did talk about it, and I’m pleased we did acknowledge it. A pleasing piece of that game, even better than winning, was the process the players went through in the last quarter knowing we were eight down and had to drag ourselves out of a hole.”
Bloxham had suggested to the players not to over celebrate if they won considering the game was just a regular season fixture.
But that thought disappeared after the final whistle as the emotion of achieving what they had been working away at for so long sunk in.
On top of that were the scenes of a Stadium Southland crowd that was also emotional.
Opposition coach Kiri Wills has since suggested the crowd was the MVP on the day and Bloxham agreed.
Bloxham said she had a tear in her eye when she saw what the victory meant to the Steel faithful.
There’s no doubt Saturday provided significant relief for everyone attached to the Steel.
Bloxham acknowledges there could be a risk attached to that, in terms not refocusing on what’s ahead, but that has been addressed.
“To be fair it wasn’t a great game on our behalf. We had two really good quarters and overtime and then the other two weren’t so great.
“So, it is till about us searching for 60 minutes of more consistently doing our jobs really well.
“We have to acknowledge that we’ve won, and we’ve celebrated that, but actually we are only going to be as good as the performance we put out there on Saturday.”
That fixture on Saturday will be against the Waikato/BOP Magic in Rotorua.