Off to Delhi to crunch some numbers

Southland netball statistician Raylene Leith-Forbes is not your average bench official.

Besides being a master number cruncher, she is also vice-president of the Southland Indoor Bowling Club, a handy golfer, and during the week earns a crust by working at a cemetery.

Leith-Forbes earned one of her biggest netballing accolades this week when she was named as one of seven Netball New Zealand bench officials to go to the Commonwealth Games in Delhi next October. She will work alongside Hastings' Sam Kerins and Nelson's Vicki Reid and will be responsible for the overall collation of statistics for teams and media.

The 45-year-old was in charge of the statistics side of things at the 2007 world championship netball final in Auckland, but admitted to being a little surprised with her selection for the Commonwealth Games.

"I thought I maybe had a chance, but thought they may have taken most of the people from the North Island."

Leith-Forbes became involved with the finer details of netball 22 years ago, through her late mother Olive Leith, who was a top-level umpire and bench official herself.

The mother and daughter combo worked together on the bench back then, but Leith-Forbes said the role had changed drastically in recent times.

"When the National Bank Cup started things got bigger and bigger. There's five on the bench now, two doing sub writing and three of us are across from them doing stats ...

"There only used to be two people on the bench."

The statistics job has existed for only the past two years and Leith-Forbes said it required plenty of teamwork and concentration.

"One of us is calling the whole game. The other one is sitting on a laptop inputting it all and the third person is putting where people shoot from and backing up the caller."

Leith-Forbes, who has been the cemetery crematorium attendant at Eastern Cemetery since 2004, played most of her competitive netball at Tokanui. She wanted to stay involved with the game when she hung up her playing bib and said working on the bench captured her interest.

"I was an average player and because of my knees I was never going to make a great umpire. It was just a way I could stay involved at the top level.

Leith-Forbes is regarded as one of New Zealand's best bench officials. She has been to the past seven national championships and does all the statistics for Southern Steel's home matches in the trans-Tasman competition.

She said working on the bench was enjoyable most of the time, but now and again it could get stressful.

"You've got to be totally focused on the umpires, making sure you get the timing right and the right shots beside the right player on the scoresheet."

Netball New Zealand has invested in a national development programme for bench officials since 2000 and Leith-Forbes said New Zealand was right up there with its Australian counterparts as the best in the world.

- © Fairfax NZ News