Netball league starts this week with no finality on player earnings

THE fifth edition of the Brutal Fruit Netball Premier League will start on Friday with players not knowing what they will get as incentives.

The Sponsorship Manager Africa of Ab InBev, Fetsi Mbele, said they are in the process of finalising everything before the tournament (11 May to 7 June) gets under way, while new Netball South Africa president Cecelia Molokwane said players would know what they are getting before the tournament ended.

“First and foremost it is important that the league keeps on running. The onus is upon us as all partners to say ‘what are the necessities to put in for the players’. We haven’t finalised that, (it) is work in progress with NSA”, said Mbele at the launch in Sandton yesterday.

“We strive for the sport to be at the professional level and for players to be paid – it is important to them. They can’t be playing for free. We can’t ask them to leave their work or studies to come and play and not to get any incentive at least.

“We are trying to work out from a commercial structure what is it that we are able to give the players. Hopefully on a (weekly) basis, starting from this weekend onward until the end.

“When we finalise and agree on those numbers with everyone we will definitely announce that for 2018 this is what the players will receive as incentive or their prize money.

“We are hoping to do this by the weekend. It also puts players at ease knowing that they can go 100% in the tournament without having doubts about whether they are going to get allowances or not,” Mbele continued.

Molokwane added: “We are getting there. We will announce it soon and will make sure you (the media) are invited when we announce it... before the end of this tournament. The tournament will definitely start without any incentives.”

Molokwane said she expects fun, excitement and better performance in this year’s semi-professional league.

“I can’t wait for the 11th. I think it’s going to be more fun. We are going to choose the President’s twelve that is going to compete in the Africa qualifiers even though we’ve qualified as the number five in the world. We want to take young talent to also make sure that we beef up the Proteas,” she said.

Despite all this prize money uncertainty, reigning champions Jaguars coach Jenny van Dyk said they’d had a great pre-season.

She also said preparing some of the girls for the Commonwealth Games last month in Gold Coast, Australia, helped them improve the quality of their training.

“It was a privilege to prepare some of our players for the Games and it helped us to lift our country as well. That is the bigger picture.

“As Jaguars we know that even though it is a different kind of pressure it won’t be easy and comfortable and it will definitely not always be perfect... what we want is the competitiveness.

“What we need in this country is to see all these teams rise up, respect each other and play (the most) competitive series we’ve ever seen.

“We must make sure we can get more people to watch and love the game,” said the Van Dyk, who won the Spar National championships, BFNPL and Varsity Cup last year.

The first game will see KwaZulu-Natal Kingdom Stars take on Northern Cape Diamonds on Friday at 4pm at Ellis Park Indoor Arena, while Free State Crinums will face Mpumalanga Sunbirds at 6pm at the same venue.