England co-captain Laura Malcolm is taking a glass-half-full attitude towards her team's international netball series against the Silver Ferns in Hamilton this week.
The Roses arrived in New Zealand on October 9, spending the first two weeks in COVID-19 quarantine in Christchurch, before back venturing out into the real world to tune up for the three tests against the world champions.
Many of their leading players were unavailable for the trip, committed to playing out the Australian Super Netball competition, while coach Jess Thirlby was forced to stay home, after testing positive for coronavirus.
The players haven't taken the court since May, when their domestic season was abandonned, while the Ferns have completed the ANZ Premiership and a quad series in preparation.
Those obstacles might seem insurmountable, but as stand-in coach Kat Ratnapala observes: "There have been a few surprises along the way, but I think we can handle most things thrown at us now."
The English camp has watched enviously, as their NZ counterparts battled NZ A, NZ U21 and NZ Men last week at Palmerston North. Their only gametime has come through a couple of practice outings against NZ A and U21 wider-squad members.
Malcom refuses to be daunted by the odds stacked against them.
"You can't NOT acknowledge that New Zealand have had their season - kind of a normal season really - had some time off and come back for the internationals," she tells Newshub. "It would be weird if you didn't acknowledge that.
"But I think the really unique opportunity we've had with the lockdowns is to work on little niggles, individual niggles… work on little areas of fitness that you don't normally get during a season.
"Normally it's just our season, followed by the international season, and you have to manage niggles and areas of your game, whereas we've had the opportunity to work on that and pay some attention to that.
"That's a real benefit we've had that they haven't. You can look at it as a negative that we haven't had our season or you can look at it as an opportunity for us to improve our game
"I think that's how we've had to approach it."
The midcourt has told BBC that her Roses - the defending Commonwealth Games gold medallists - are here to win the series, as they prepare to defend their crown at Durban 2022.
"We are here to compete - we are here to take the test series.
"We can't even play a fun warm-up game together without wanting to beat each other."
Join us at 7:30pm Wednesday for live updates of the first Silver Ferns v England Taini Jamison Trophy test
