Unsung heroes

ELIMINATION finals for the GFNL started last weekend. Great competitors. Fit, strong, happy girls. Team work. Spectacular wins and heartbreaking losses.

The grandstands are up and the barriers are placed around each of the courts. Club physiotherapists are seemingly strapping every hinge joint while supporters talk in animated conversation about who will win and why.

And that all happens without a whistle blowing.

In the arena of competitive netball there is one category of official that is not celebrated, rarely acknowledged and never thanked. They are not paid. They are not trained. They do not wear a uniform. They have the hardest and most terrifying job of all. They are the scorers.

I didn’t grow up playing basketball or footy but as our children play both and I know the rules of neither game, I have, with the assistance of grandfathers of footy players, siblings of basketball players and parents of team mates, learnt how to score in both sports with a vague level of competence and very little stress.

But netball scoring is an entirely different beast. Despite knowing all the rules and having played the game for nearly 20 years, scoring a game is genuinely terrifying.

Before the first whistle blows and before each subsequent quarter starts, the scorer must ensure the playing position of each team member is recorded against their name.

By the end of the season you recognise each player on your team but early in the season you scramble to work out that “Belle” who is playing GA is actually Isabella M as opposed to Arabella, Isobel, Lulabelle or Isabella P! Dear me.

You must record each unsuccessful attempt at goal for each of the two goal scoring players in each team unless an obstruction is called, as that may alter the goaler’s percentage statistics. Noting that each time a player has the ball they have only three seconds to release it and that the high winds at Kardinia Park cause many misses, there can be multiple attempts, obstructions and ultimately a goal scored every few seconds. To record this your head is moving faster than a bobble head doll at high speed.

Each centre pass must also be recorded for each team.

Some games can have 80-100 centre passes. In games where scores are disputed this is the most important stat recorded as it is a check and balance for the goals. That is, there must always be one more centre pass than goal. Get that wrong and your score is wrong too. Then there is the progressive score. This is, the running score for the game for each team and it too serves as a checkpoint for the scores recorded against each scorer for each quarter. Spectators, coaches and team managers use the two-minute break between quarters to check their recorded scores with you while you are manually trying to add dashes and not dots and cross check your own score against the centre passes and progressive score tally. Your view of the game is often obscured by umpires or players and while craning your bobbing head to see, you also observe the netball mums’ faces and are reminded of their maternal ferocity and the wrath you would endure if you were to get it wrong.

The experience is not only frantic but frankly terrifying.

You are often on your own as the opposition scorer grapples with all sorts of game-day technology .

Professionally, part of my job is to manage large pieces of hard fought litigation at court for the benefit of injured people.

While stressful, I love my job, my clients and litigation. But the thought of having to score a closely-contested netball final last weekend gave me butterflies in the pit of my stomach and a sleepless night

Fortunately, what I didn’t know was that parents can’t score their own team game in finals and when the real scorer arrived for duty and I was relieved of my imagined post, I literally kissed her, on top of her St Mary’s beanie in appreciation.

Fortunately I have known her for years otherwise that moment would have been very awkward indeed. So as we progress deeper into finals season let’s all take a moment to thank the unsung heroes of netball. Not the players, the coaches or the umpires but those with genuine nerves of steel, the scorers. Rachel Schutze is a Principal Lawyer at Gordon Legal, wife and mother of three. [Ed’s note Ms Schutze is married to Corio MP Richard Marles]