From famine to feast. After months being starved of action, the nation’s netballers are finally able to gorge on games again — and it promises to be a record-breaking summer.
‘Hopefully it will be the biggest summer of netball we’ve ever had,’ says England Netball chief executive Fran Connolly. ‘I don’t think people will be deciding, like they sometimes do, to take a rest in the summer. Right now, players feel like they’ve had a long enough break and are ready to return.
‘I think courts will be packed across the length and breadth of the country and our ambition is to put on more summer leagues than we’ve ever run before.
Greencroft Netball Club in action against Great Park in Newcastle on Monday night
‘We want to get clubs, leagues and programmes unlocked in every locality across the country over the next couple of months to give everyone the opportunity to play the game in whatever way works for them.’
Netball in this country has enjoyed many milestone moments in recent years, from winning Commonwealth Games gold in 2018 to successfully staging the World Cup the following summer. But the significance of this week’s reopening of indoor courts should not be understated given just how much the sport has suffered over the past 14 months.
‘This is the final part of the game for us that will be unlocked and it’s a fantastic landmark for us,’ admits Connolly. ‘It’s been a really tough year for the sport and everyone is desperate to get back on court for their emotional, social, and physical wellbeing. The netball family are hugely excited. There’s definitely a buzz.’
Following the third national lockdown which came into force in January, grassroots netball first returned outdoors at the end of March. But before Monday, the indoor game had effectively been banned since last September, when the ‘rule of six’ was applied to indoor team sport.
‘Pre-pandemic, about 50 per cent of the sport was played indoors so big chunks of the sport had to be shut down,’ explains Connolly.
‘There weren’t the facilities available, there weren’t the floodlights. From our research, we also know that a proportion of our audience just simply aren’t comfortable participating outside in public spaces in terms of their self-confidence. That includes 57 per cent of teenage girls and many participants on our Back to Netball and Walking Netball programmes. So a number of women and girls have been restricted from playing the game for months.’
Despite such damaging restrictions, England Netball was protected financially thanks to 80,000 members — 75 per cent — renewing their membership even without the promise of matches. Now the challenge for the game’s governing body is to get participation figures back to what they were before the pandemic.
Indoor courts have reopened this week in a major boost for the sport after a tough year
At its peak, 3.1million people were playing netball during the year and more than 850,000 were taking to court weekly.
‘The pandemic couldn’t have hit us at a worse time,’ admits Connolly. ‘It really did stunt our momentum. We came into 2020 on a complete high, following the history-making success on the world stage when the Roses won the Commonwealth Games in 2018, and then the home World Cup in 2019. As we entered 2020, every netball fixture we put on sold out within a couple of days so there really was a huge momentum behind the sport.
‘We were seeing that pay dividends at the grassroots of the game, where our participation level has boomed. Over the last decade we’ve seen a doubling of participation in every age group and across every programme that we put out there.
‘Now we have a two-fold challenge. The first is servicing the demands of those ready to return to courts, because 60 per cent of the facilities that we used pre-pandemic are still closed or not yet open for hire, and we don’t necessarily have confirmation of when they’re going to be open.
‘The second part is this mass rebuild effort that we have to do across the women and girls network to rebuild confidence levels and exercise habits.’
So far, more than half of the 3,000 clubs in the country are back playing, and 75 per cent of 300 leagues plan to return over the next two months. ‘We’re going to need to be patient and we’re going to have to work hard, cross-sport, to get some women and girls to return to sport,’ adds Connolly.
‘I think there’s going to be a number of gentle nudges needed. We understand that some people are raring and ready to go and other people will need more support. But we’re not seeing any drop in the appetite to consume netball. When it’s out there, people want to get their hands on it.
‘We’ve got lots of things to look forward to, including the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham next summer. There are a lot of opportunities to shine a light on the sport and keep it very visible and forefront in people’s minds.
‘We’re desperate to recover that momentum and we do believe it’s possible.’
