Few have given back as much to netball as Yvonne Willering, and now the former Silver Fern defender and coach is sharing her nous with football – while kayaking and growing giant sunflowers, she tells Suzanne McFadden.

She’s played netball for New Zealand, coached the Silver Ferns, and received an impressive list of national accolades recognising all she’s done for the sport. And yet she still keeps the passport she first arrived here with.

“I’m a New Zealander, absolutely,” the 74-year-old ‘semi-retired’ Willering says. “But I want to retain my Nederlands passport as a reminder of where I’ve come from and where I am now.”

Although she’s been deeply immersed in the game for six decades – as a zestful player, a driven coach, an umpire, selector and commentator – there’s so much more to Willering than netball.

Before she became a Silver Fern 50 years ago, she was a lipstick inspector in London, a forklift driver at a liquor bottle depot in Vancouver, and a microbiologist at Auckland Hospital.

To continue reading: Where is she now? Yvonne Willering - Newsroom

Article added: Wednesday 03 July 2024