NNZ boss issues plea for funding

Netball will be at ‘‘risk’’ without immediate support to offset a projected 47 per cent revenue deficit since the coronavirus pandemic, Netball New Zealand chief executive Jennie Wyllie says.

She told parliament’s epidemic response select committee yesterday that there had been ‘‘hundreds of millions of under investment in female sports participation’’ in recent decades and it needed to be addressed.

Wyllie, who has repeatedly warned about the financial toll on New Zealand’s largest female sport, told MPS that netball needed support before projected government sports recovery funding is rolled out in early July.

‘‘I fear July’s just too late for parts of our system,’’ she said.

‘‘We have already experienced insolvency in netball,’’ she said, referring to the Netball Mainland zone, and she considered there was a potential ‘‘high risk’’ for other entities.

Wyllie said Netball New Zealand favoured the return of elite and community sport at Level 2 ‘‘provided it is deemed to be safe’’. She also supported the re-opening of trans-tasman and Pacific borders.

But much of Wyllie’s address focused around sport’s financial plight.

She said the Government’s $25m relief package for community sport, announced yesterday, was a ‘‘tactical’’ response, but a strategic package was needed and netball ‘‘must be at the table’’ for any funding discussions.

‘‘There is no other organisation in New Zealand with the breadth of connection with women and girls in our communities,’’ said Wyllie, who said netball had more than 350,000 participants and thousands more volunteers in 83 centres and five zones.

She said NNZ felt the government needed a ‘‘cross-sector’’ working group, including netball and other national sports organisations (NSOS), to ‘‘urgently look at an alternative funding solution to replace the significant decline in community sport funding’’ through a collapse in gaming revenue. She said there would be a projected $75 million annual deficit left by the loss of Class Four gaming funding.

Wyllie said NNZ received 40 per cent of its revenue from broadcasting and commercial deals, 17 per cent from membership fees and 16 per cent from Class Four gaming grants. Government support from Sport New Zealand and High Performance

Sport New Zealand accounted for around 6 per cent.

‘‘Many of these revenue streams are currently turned off, and are not likely to return at the same level.’’

Wyllie said there was presently ‘‘no replacement for this funding’’ which helped pay the salaries of people working in sport at grassroots level.

‘‘It’s making survival of community sport a very tenuous thing.

‘‘Unless we are prepared to lose all the sporting frameworks that Aotearoa is dependent on, the sporting sector will urgently require alternative funding sources to replace approximately $75 million in lost revenue, both this year and ongoing.

‘‘Without it participation levels will decline and our most vulnerable will have fewer inputs into sport.’’

Wyllie urged the government ‘‘create equality’’ and not to ‘‘squander this chance to address this systemic inequity across sport’’.

‘‘Any response to women’s sport is a visible acknowledgement to our communities that you see them and that they matter.’’

Wyllie was ‘‘equally concerned about the unseen impact we should be anticipating in respect to the mental health of New Zealanders’’.

‘‘This will be our most dangerous epidemic, and we will continue to battle this for years to come.

‘‘Getting sport up and going as soon as it’s safe will play a vital role in New Zealand’s economic and social recovery. It builds resilience and it provides inspiration.’’

She said netballers were among New Zealand’s ‘‘most vulnerable’’ and ‘‘discriminated against’’ and ‘‘netball was their means of escape’’.

Sir Richard Hadlee, New Zealand’s greatest cricketer, is digging in for the battle to dismiss his toughest foe.

Hadlee has revealed, in a telling interview with former national team-mate Ian Smith in the second instalment of Sky Sport’s The Pod series last night that the cancer he was diagnosed with in 2018 remains a major concern.

In an entertaining chat between two of the standout figures in a golden era for New Zealand cricket, Hadlee opens up on his health battle that saw him undergo two surgeries in 2018, as well as chemotherapy treatment, after being diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer.

The legendary right-arm fast bowler and dashing left-hand lower-order bat told Smith that the treatments appear to have gone well but admits, as the renowned numbers man he was during his career, that he does not feel he is out of the woods yet.

‘‘I finished my chemo just over a year ago now towards the end of January and the body has been recovering since,’’ Hadlee said.

‘‘At the moment I feel very, very good, and have done for a good year and a bit. The weight’s back on, I think I’ve got my sense of humour back and things are good.’’

But Hadlee said statistical realities keep him on edge as he lives with the knowledge the cancer could return.

‘‘With the diagnosis of stage 4 colorectal [cancer] I was given the news I’ve got a 50 percent chance of surviving five years

. . . well, I’m two years into that

five, so the next 12-24 months are still quite critical because if anything comes back – the thought of going through the whole process again is not one I would relish.’’

Then Hadlee, the first man to 400 wickets in tests, showed indeed that that sense of humour had made it through his ordeal.

‘‘So, being the stats man I am, I’d like to try and beat those odds and be on the right side of 50 per cent,’’ he said.