NET PROFIT
How Kiwi netball won bigtime after their trans-Tasman split
The ending, when it finally came, was a relief to Netball NZ executives. After a year of increasingly tense negotiations with their Australian counterparts, the decision was made in April, 2016, to nix the trans-Tasman league. Each country would go it alone.
The sudden unravelling of the groundbreaking competition – the only trans-Tasman sporting league for women – shocked the players, coaches and wider netball community.
‘‘I think all of us players were gutted,’’ says Pulse skipper Katrina Rore. ‘‘I felt like netball had come a long way and it was a great competition, and New Zealand and Australia battling it week-in, week-out was awesome. So to go back to playing just amongst ourselves, at the time, felt like it was going to be a step backwards.’’
There were grave predictions, too, about what the split would mean for the competitiveness of the Silver Ferns, the wider high performance system, and even the sport as a whole, as netball faced increased competition from rugby and cricket, which had begun aggressively upping investment in its women’s games.
These predictions rung in the ears of Netball NZ (NNZ) chief executive Jennie Wyllie, who was elevated from chief financial officer to the top job in mid-2016 as the sport was beginning to contemplate life after the trans-Tasman league.
Starting over from scratch was scary for Wyllie.
‘‘When you start anything new, there is a moment when you think ‘oh gosh, what is all this going to mean?’,’’ she says.
There was only one thought that scared her more: what would happen if they voted ‘‘remain’’ in a one-sided trans-Tasman union.
The circumstances that led to the breakdown of the relationship between NNZ and Netball Australia has been the subject of numerous revisionist histories, particularly in the aftermath of the Silver Ferns’ horror showing at the Commonwealth Games in 2018.
Wyllie picks her words carefully when asked what went on behind the scenes during that time, but there’s one point she wants to clarify: She says New Zealand was not offered three franchise berths in a revamped trans-Tasman league as has been widely reported – they were offered just one. The reality was Netball NZ had no choice but to walk away.
Now, as the ANZ Premiership enters its fourth season this weekend, we are beginning to see the impacts of decisions made during that fraught period, and in the aftermath.
No-one knew quite what the new era of ANZ Premiership netball would bring, but there was one outcome most were certain of: it would be an absolute disaster for the Silver Ferns.
The big concern at the time of the split was that the struggling Ferns side would fall further behind their Australian counterparts without regular exposure to their style of play, while nations like England, Jamaica and South Africa, who allow their athletes to play in the league, will race ahead.
Those fears appeared well-founded when the New Zealand team slumped to their worst finish at a major event at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, a year after the split, failing to make the podium.
Little over a year later, Ferns skipper Laura Langman was lifting the World Cup.
Much of the credit for the stunning turnaround can be put down to the Noeline Taurua effect. The coaching mastermind’s influence on New Zealand netball has been nothing short of inspirational. But Rore believes the focus on developing homegrown talent in the new ANZ Premiership era is also starting to bear fruit.
‘‘At the time [the split] happened I guess we weren’t doing great [internationally],’’ she deadpans. ‘‘I think now with the ANZ we have lots of opportunities for our own talent to shine and get more court time and, as we saw at the World Cup last year, it has paid off for us. We are a lot more confident in our own brand of netball and have rediscovered the strengths in our game. Because I don’t think we always played to our strengths in the old league.’’
Wyllie says when Netball NZ launched the new competition there was always the expectation that it would be a ‘‘slow burn’’ and it would take some time to make up the ground lost in the merged competition.
During the trans-Tasman era, New Zealand’s high performance system narrowed and fractured as it looked outward, rather than inward, to address its competitive struggles.
The league was not a level playing field from the beginning. The broadcast revenue, generated solely out of New Zealand over all nine years of the competition, was split equally among the 10 franchises. But Wyllie says the Australian teams, backed by their respective state bodies, were blessed with far greater resources than the Kiwi counterparts.
‘‘It was a really tough environment for those New Zealand franchises. I think we went into this horrible downward spiral, as we believed to be successful we needed to try and match the Australian style of play. We started recruiting their players and coaches, and lost our own unique style,’’ she says.
The new era hastened the elevation of the next generation of netball stars.
The addition of a new team – the south Auckland-based Stars, coupled with the loss of a raft of imports, who looked for opportunities in Australia’s new Super Netball competition, meant the Kiwi teams had to fill gaps in their rosters with young players – some of whom, like the Pulse’s Tiana Metuarau, were still in high school when they got the call-up to the senior team.
‘‘It was a very much a younger-skewed league in those first couple of years,’’ says Wyllie. ‘‘There were 17, 18, 19 year olds in starting roles for their teams. It probably took some time for those players to find their feet and adjust to the professional environments, but it has helped build depth in the system quite quickly.’’
While the most obvious and outward facing change was the move back to a fully domestic league, arguably the more significant development has been the introduction of a second-tier competition, the Beko League, in 2016. Wyllie believes the competition, in which every team is aligned to an ANZ Premiership franchise, has helped bridge the gap to the top level.
‘‘Our focus has been about growing opportunities for Kiwi athletes and showing clarity in our pathways. We were able to go from having 50 athletes – when you accounted for imports – having those opportunities, to 120 over ANZ and Beko and that’s only building now.’’
There’s a notable shift in language when you speak to the head of Netball Australia, Marne Fechner, about the new league across the Tasman, Suncorp Super Netball.
Whereas Wyllie makes continued references to providing ‘‘quality environments’’, ‘‘performance pathways’’, and ‘‘whole of sport’’, with Fechner, you’ll hear the words ‘‘product’’, ‘‘entertainment package’’, ‘‘commercialisation’’ and ‘‘consumption’’ a lot.
It illustrates the two very different approaches taken by the respective organisations.
Netball Australia has taken an unapologetically commercial focus with its new league in a bid to get cut-through in a highly competitive broadcast market. It’s meant the organisation has had to be innovative, introducing numerous rule changes and flashy made-for-TV features to the presentation of its game.
‘‘It is a really competitive sport entertainment market here in Australia, it is probably one of the most cluttered in the world in terms of professional sports leagues, so we are really clear that this product needed to be an entertainment product,’’ says Fechner.
‘‘We needed to have high performance outcomes, but at its core it was around broadcast and commercialisation and increasing the number of fans.’’
The current challenge facing Netball Australia is balancing the commercial imperatives with the needs of its international programme.
The perennial debate over the league’s open import rule has grown legs in the lead-up to the 2020 season following last year’s World Cup loss to the Ferns. It was the first time the Diamonds have lost two major events in successive years after going down to England in the 2018 Commonwealth Games final.
The fall-out from those two shock losses – each by one goal – saw Lisa Alexander axed as Diamonds coach last month, but many across the Tasman believe Netball Australia also needs to look at how its own decision-making contributed to the Diamonds’ predicament.
It has been argued allowing franchises open slather on imports has limited the opportunities for local players and created positional shortages, particularly in the shooting end, with all but two franchises having imports occupying the goal shoot bib.
It doesn’t require a crystal ball to see where Australia might end up – they only need to look at the predicament New Zealand found itself in six years ago after Irene van Dyk retired.
But former West Coast Fever coach Sue Gaudion, who is now in the Channel Nine commentary team, does not believe having unlimited imports in the league and the success of the Diamonds programme are mutually exclusive.
‘‘I think it’s used as an excuse. I’m a bit sick of it, actually. I acknowledge that it is a contributing factor [to the Diamonds’ losses], but it doesn’t stand on its own,’’ says Gaudion.
‘‘At the end of the day the national body has made a very conscious decision about where it wants to go, and in some respects has probably been forced into that decision, because if we didn’t do something bold and different, where would we sit?
‘‘We need to be an entertainment product and we need characters and personalities and stories. Whether we like it or not, we need controversy. So the imports become almost a non-negotiable, because they are a massive part of the success of the league. They add to the flavour of the league and they add to the star power.’’
Gaudion has taken trying to boost spectator and viewership numbers into her own hands as well. Last season she launched a grassroots campaign ‘Wake-Up Netball’ to try to tap into the large percentage of netball’s 1 million-plus participation base that were not engaging with the game at the professional end.
‘‘The way that the women’s sport landscape has changed in Australia with the AFLW coming in and the women’s Big Bash and things like that . . . we’re in a fight now, that’s our reality,’’ says Gaudion.
That fight appears even more grim in the wake of reports across the Tasman of Netball Australia receiving a seven-figure bailout from the government, leading to questions over the sustainability of the league.
Netball became entangled in the sports rorts scandal that has engulfed Australian politics this year, with accusations former sports minister Bridget McKenzie overrode Sport Australia’s official grants process and diverted $2.5 million from the Health Department to prop up Netball Australia.
The Saturday Paper reported ‘‘McKenzie authorised the grant after Netball Australia complained that the broadcast deal for its Super Netball series had not proved as lucrative as it had hoped’’.
Fechner denies the funding was a bailout, claiming the seven-figure government grant went towards commercial projects.
‘‘There was no bailout at all. It was a convenient story in the context of what was being talked about in the media at the time with the sports rorts. We have an on-going relationship with the government both at federal and state level and secure all different kinds of government funding,’’ she says.
‘‘That specific grant was for investment in a number of key strategic projects, which related to our digital platform, SSN and a whole range of different things that funding programme was associated with. It was about pursuing an aggressive growth strategy, so by no means was it a bailout. We are in a very healthy position financially.’’
Asked if the league was losing money, Fechner responded: ‘‘Netball Australia continues to invest in the competition as we have identified it as a strategic priority.
‘‘We believe we are in a confident position in relation to sustainability across the sport. We do want to see greater returns through event products like Suncorp Super Netball, however.’’
Compared with the flashy made-for-TV product across the Tasman, the lack of innovation in New Zealand’s league is stark. Since securing a free-to-air deal in the 1980s, netball has enjoyed a comfortable foothold in the New Zealand broadcast market. There are concerns that security has bred inertia.
‘‘When you look at the in-stadium experience and the broadcast presentation of the ANZ Premiership, it doesn’t look a hell of a lot different from the old National Bank Cup days,’’ says one sports industry insider.
‘‘Part of it, I think, is a lack of imagination on NNZ’s part, but Sky has to put its hand up as well. They need to invest in its own products. They’ve taken a paint by numbers approach for too long now. I mean, where’s the innovation?’’
Wyllie acknowledges the need to innovate across the board and says we can expect to see several tweaks to the game-day experience and television product in 2020.
‘‘Now that we have kind of bedded in the competition, we want to really focus on building that fandom and lifting the whole experience, because we know the product on court is really good. We’re pushing that really hard in 2020 and ramping it up again in 2021,’’ she says.
‘‘We’re very conscious we have to keep evolving and make sure we are delivering a product that is relevant to the fans and spectators.’’
Wyllie says NNZ is acutely aware it cannot waste the opportunity the Ferns’ World Cup win last year has provided it to build momentum and expose New Zealand audiences to a new breed of stars like Ameliaranne Ekenasio, Jane Watson and Gina Crampton, as well as the up and comers like Kimiora Poi, Karin Burger and Grace Nweke.
Taurua believes last year’s success can have the same impact on the domestic competition as New Zealand’s last World Cup triumph in 2003.
‘‘If you think back to the seasons following that World Cup win, that was when the
National Bank Cup was at its strongest. There was so much hype around it because everyone wanted to see the Ferns in action and, man, that competition was tough,’’ says Taurua.
Gaudion recalls this period as well. While the Australians had a strong domestic league and grassroots competitions, they couldn’t help but look across enviously at the commercial success of the New Zealand league, enriched by a free-to-air TV deal.
‘‘I look at the landscape over there now, and it’s almost like we’ve switched positions. Who would have bloody thought that would happen?’’
‘‘If you think back to the seasons following that World Cup win, that was when the National Bank Cup was at its strongest. There was so much hype around it because everyone wanted to see the Ferns in action and, man, that competition was tough.’’
Noeline Taurua