Media Headliner: Newcombe's safe hands help Marie Claire through evolution.(Biography)

Jackie Newcombe's sure the title's price cut will improve circulation.

For years, people have been calling Jackie Newcombe a safe pair of hands, little realising there was a time when she was indeed a formidable last line of defence. These days, the closest she gets to sporting endeavour is playing in goal for her two teenage sons in knockabout games of football out in the garden, but there was a time when she was a serious player.

At netball, not football. If things had been different, Newcombe would have become a PE teacher following her degree in Sports Science and History at Loughborough University, where she was an accomplished goal defence for the netball team. On one occasion, the team beat Aston (University not Villa) by 60 goals to one.

Afterwards, the mood was more sombre than you'd have thought and there was an inquest about Newcombe's miserable failure to keep a clean sheet.

That early introduction to the relentless pursuit of perfection has probably stood her in good stead down the years.

Her latest task represents a slightly more awkward sporting challenge.

Newcombe was given the job of publishing director at Marie Claire last September, so her first major public task was to explain a set of ABC circulation figures for 2003 that were down around 10 per cent year on year.