## 1 Introduction  
Netball is a multidirectional team sport that is reliant on high levels of endurance, speed, power, strength, agility, and flexibility for optimal performance [1, 2]. Netball players, in particular, are challenged further on the basis that their sport requires frequent accelerations, decelerations, and directional changes that result in a non-trivial probability of injury, especially to the knee and ankle joints [1, 3]. More specifically, the injury incidence rate of netball players is \(\sim\)11.3-14 injuries per 1000 player hours, with the ankle and knee joints accounting for 13-86% and 8-50% of all injuries, respectively, depending on the age and level of play [1, 3, 4, 5]. Given the physical demands (e.g., agility), outcomes (e.g., potential injury), and growing competitiveness of the sport, the monitoring of certain performance characteristics has become increasingly important.  
The most common mechanisms of injury in netball are largely ascribed to landing (\(\sim\)12-38%), trips/falls (\(\sim\)12-29%), collisions (\(\sim\)8-28%), and direct ball contact (\(\sim\)6%) [1, 3, 6, 7, 8]. Given that injuries from landing tend to predominate the injury spectrum and that the choice of landing is situationally dependent, the evaluation of landing mechanics is likely to inform injury risk, as well as guide conditioning strategies to mitigate these risks [2, 7, 9]. In this line, experimental evidence has shown that dynamic postural control during landing,which is contingent on a functional neuromuscular system, is a likely contributing factor for injury, especially in soft tissue structures of the knee and ankle in female athletes [10; 11; 12; 13].  
Although neuromuscular deficits of the lower extremities are typically measured using static unilateral positions [5; 14; 15; 16], more dynamic tasks are considered a better fit for the evaluation of athletic populations [17; 18]. As such, to provide an objective measure of postural stability, the time-to-stabilisation (TTS) measurement technique is used to evaluate the time taken to reach a stable position following a jump-landing task [17; 18; 19]. The evaluation of dynamic stability exhibits additional utility on the basis that it is dependent on good lower-extremity muscular strength, as strength deficits have been associated with slower stabilisation times [20; 21]. However, to determine whether the TTS demonstrates a relationship between knee joint strength and dynamic stability would require further research, especially among athletic populations. Furthermore, almost no research exists on the functional integration between unilateral multidirectional landing kinetics, TTS, and lower-extremity muscular strength in elite netball players [22].  
Therefore, the primary objectives of the current study were fourfold: (i) to assess differences in unilateral knee-joint muscle strength; (ii) to evaluate whether unilateral landing kinetics differ as a function of landing direction; (iii) to determine whether TTS values are dependent on the unilaterality and directionality of landing, as well as knee joint strength; and (iv) to examine the relationship between unilateral multidirectional landing kinetics, TTS, and knee-joint strength in high-level netball players. We hypothesised that: (i) force-time profiles would differ as a function of jump-landing direction [22], (ii) TTS would exhibit significant differences depending on landing direction and unilaterality and would be negatively correlated with eccentric knee-extensor strength [19], and (iii) eccentric knee-extensor torque would likely exhibit significant negative correlations with landing force and TTS [21]. The expected findings should therefore provide useful information related to the effectiveness of knee-joint strengthening and conditioning with respect to the ability to stabilise the body upon landing and whether there is any transferability between isokinetic strength testing and dynamic joint loading during functional landing tasks.