New West Coast Fever captain Catherine Cox could face former team NSW Swifts first up in the trans-Tasman netball competition’s first full scale pre-season tournament starting in New Zealand on Friday.

All 10 teams will contest the three-day event in Tauranga – four weeks before the start of the season proper.

The teams will be split into two pools of five, with each playing the other four on their side of the draw.

On the third and final day, each team will play the side that finished in the same position in the opposite pool.

Reigning trans-Tasman champions Queensland Firebirds play New Zealand’s Steel on Friday and are also in the same pool as Australian rivals Swifts and Fever and perennial kiwi powerhouse Magic.

The other pool brings together Adelaide Thunderbirds, Melbourne Vixens and three New Zealand teams, the Tactix, Mystics and Pulse.

West Coast, the only Australian team never to have won the trans-Tasman competition, have recruited Cox and dual Diamonds’ world championship-winning coach Norma Plummer.

Fever’s first match is against the Swifts, the team Cox led with distinction for several seasons and steered to the inaugural trans-Tasman title in 2008.

Veteran shooter Cox said she wasn’t sure whether Plummer would play her against the Swifts, but felt it would be strange if she did line up against her old team.

“It will be hard to play against them, no question, probably just because I played with them for 11 years,” Cox told AAP.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if I passed the ball to the opposition accidentally.”

She could end up being part of a formidable twin towers shooting combination with Fever and Diamonds’ team-mate Caitlin Bassett.

“Whether or not Norma (Plummer) wants to play that way we don’t know, but it’s definitely one of the combinations we’ll be working on this week,” Cox said.

Coaches will be able to experiment with their lineups while scouting all the other teams, some of whom have made several roster changes.

“The New Zealanders have actually had quite a bit of (player) movement. It will be interesting to see how the dynamics work within each team,” Swifts’ co-captain Kimberlee Green told AAP.

“Firebirds are a bit unknown. We’ve seen some press releases from other teams doing their pre-season competitions and things like that but we haven’t heard from the Firebirds, so looking forward to seeing how they go.”