Missing the semi-finals at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games could have marked the end of a story. For Spar Proteas head coach Jenny van Dyk, it opened the most important chapter of her tenure.
Team South Africa finished fifth in Glasgow, up from sixth at Birmingham 2022, after pool defeats to Australia and England and a 62-54 win over Uganda in the play-off for fifth place. Speaking to gsport, Van Dyk described the missed semi-final as “one of the most important things that could have happened to us”, because it “gave us the red flags that we now have to work on”.
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With the 2027 Netball World Cup in Sydney ten months away, she leaves no doubt about the target.
“Well, for us, you know, we want to get into that semi-final spot. We’ve said it a few times, but that was always our big marker.”
Spar Proteas Head Coach, Jenny van Dyk
Glasgow, in her telling, was a staging post rather than the destination. “We have always been quite realistic and for us the first marker was always going to be the World Cup. And that’s where we’re really putting the pressure on ourselves to make it to the semi-finals.”
Netball South Africa appointed Van Dyk on 28 February 2024 on a four-year contract that runs to Sydney. The cycle, she points out, was never a full four years.
“It wasn’t a four-year phase in preparing for the World Cup. It was, by the time we got appointed and by the time we started working with our team, there was only three seasons left, four seasons left.”
That compressed timeline sharpens every decision. Van Dyk recalls the criticism of a Glasgow fixture list that sent her side into Australia and England in quick succession, and she sees it differently.
“But in retrospect for us, that’s exactly what you would have in a semis and a finals. You’ll play semis against one of the top three and the finals against the next. So that’s actually quite a good indicator if we are ready for that level or not.”
The verdict was honest. “So for us, it was important to see that there’s still some work that needs to be done for us to be consistent in playing two of those matches in a row against the best consecutively. And that’s now where we’ll have to get the work done before the World Cup.”
Van Dyk’s logic for closing that gap is direct: “for us to beat number four and for us to continue to beat number six and to beat number three, we have to play one and two.”
Her side has done exactly that. In 2025 New Zealand won the Taini Jamison Trophy 3-0, the final test by a single goal at 57-56, before Australia completed a 3-0 series win in October. Van Dyk names the physicality, power and fitness of the leading nations, and the daily standard of professional leagues, as the edges South Africa must match.
The fixes she describes are precise rather than dramatic. “It’s as simple as it sounds, the error rate was always just too high.” Alongside accuracy comes intensity across all four quarters, a standard she credits Norma Plummer with instilling in the previous group, and the discipline to avoid the brief lapses in concentration that can surrender a lead. Small margins, she stresses, decide these contests.
The progress shows against England. South Africa beat the Roses 61-59 at the Netball Nations Cup in Nottingham in February 2025, then won the home series 2-1 at Ellis Park Arena in Johannesburg in February 2026.
The coach leading this campaign was shaped by two women who trusted her early and corrected her honestly.
When Elize Kotze became national coach in 2010, she asked the young Van Dyk to take over the Tuks first team. “And I said to her, well, I’m not ready. I’m way too young.” Kotze’s answer stayed with her. “And she said, well, you can do all things. And I believe in you.”
Van Dyk still carries the lesson: “Just because you feel you’re not ready doesn’t mean you can’t do it”.
The second lesson came from Plummer, at a time when Van Dyk’s teams kept falling short in finals. Determined to prove herself, she admits: “I over coached. I gave them all the answers. I gave them everything.” Plummer’s advice changed her approach. “And she said, once you’re going to stop spoon feeding and start really letting your players do the thinking on court, you’re going to find a different result.”
Van Dyk’s coaching became, in her words, “athlete driven”. At the first training session of a new season, she told her Gauteng Jaguars: “we either win the finals or we don’t play in the finals at all.” The Jaguars went on to win five consecutive Telkom Netball League titles from 2017 to 2021.
That trust in players now shapes how she builds the squad for Sydney. South Africa took a young side to the 2026 Africa Netball Cup in Nairobi, where Uganda won the final. Van Dyk stands by the decision.
“To me, if anybody would ask me if I would take the exact same team and go and do that again, I would say yes.”
She frames the defeat as part of the journey. “But in certain stages, certain things need to happen to give you a wake-up call and to just put you back on path.”
Newer faces such as Kyla Dames, capped at the 2025 Africa Netball Cup, and Karla Victor, who debuted in Glasgow, earned their chances the same way. “It’s in the way they are young in the team, but they play as leaders on court.”
Van Dyk shares the load with assistant coach Zanele Mdodana, the former Proteas captain and Maties head coach. The relationship works, she says, because Mdodana “doesn’t have to feel like she only has to say what I want to hear”.
“I think, you know, with the limited resources that sometimes we have available, you have to rely so much on the people around you and the team that you do have.” Van Dyk’s leadership pairs ambition with clear sight of the competition.
“Everybody in the top four works very hard to keep that position and to improve on their positions as well. So we knew that it was not just about catching up. It’s also about understanding that nobody’s waiting for you to get there.”
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Realism has never meant settling. South Africa, she insists, “will never be a team that doesn’t push for a win”.
In Sydney, the reward for that push is clear: “For us to get to the semis, means we can medal. And that to us is important.”
Main Photo Caption: Spar Proteas head coach Jenny van Dyk has set a semi-final spot at the 2027 Netball World Cup in Sydney as the team’s defining target, building on the lessons of a fifth-place finish for Team South Africa at the Commonwealth Games, sealed with a 62-54 win over Uganda in the play-off for fifth place at The Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland, on 31 July 2026. All Photos: Netball South Africa
Photo 2 Caption: Mentored early by Elize Kotze and Norma Plummer, Jenny van Dyk learnt that trusting players to think for themselves on court is what wins finals.
Photo 3 Caption: Assistant coach Zanele Mdodana and head coach Jenny van Dyk lead the Spar Proteas through a working partnership built on honest daily conversation.
Photo 4 Caption: Ten months out from Sydney, Van Dyk is building squad depth, backing young leaders and cutting the error rate to close the gap on the world’s best.
Photo 5 Caption: Kneeling among her players during a break in play, Van Dyk guides an athlete-driven Spar Proteas side to make its own decisions.
