At last for coming up
AS KADEEN CORBIN cartwheeled across the Coomera Indoor Sports Centre, England Netball’s social media feed proclaimed yesterday a “blooming marvellous” victory. “Bloomin’, heck,” said Tracey Neville, the England coach.
Joyous scenes confirmed not only the Roses’ first win over Australia for five years but a breakthrough moment for gutsy England as gold became theirs with a dramatic 52-51 triumph.
“It’s not failure to us and it’s not going to define us,” said Caitlin Bassett, Australia’s captain. For England, this was success on the grandest scale, their first major title of any description and with perfect timing too, ahead of next year’s World Cup in Liverpool.
Even The Australian newspaper went as far to describe the heavy favourites’ defeat as “the biggest upset in Commonwealth history”.
Yet for 60 minutes of this pulsating final, the two teams could hardly be separated. The match – just 24 hours after England’s last-gasp 56-55 semi-final win over Jamaica – was a humdinger from the outset. Australia had led 14-13 at the end of the first quarter. At the break it was 25-25 before England found themselves four goals down in the final quarter.
The physical nature of the match – two England players went sprawling on the floor – left centre Serena Guthrie needing to leave the court injured.
Jade Clarke came on for her 150th cap and, with 90 seconds left, England turned the tables to lead 51-50. Still the drama unfolded as the Diamonds levelled with 20 seconds left.
Then, with two extra halves of seven minutes looming, both Jo Harten and Helen Housby missed in the final seconds.
But Housby was then awarded a penalty call and calmly found the net to spark wild scenes. The hope now for English netball is that it will be lifted off the ground after a 34 per cent shortfall in funding last year.
This success should therefore be applauded, with only £3m allocated to the national team and 24 players on centralised contracts. Neville said: “We have a massive noose around our neck to keep our funding, to retain and sustain that, to attract more people to the sport. Hopefully this will take us one step in the right direction.”
Six of England’s 12-strong squad compete in the Australia and New Zealand professional leagues, where players are given billboard treatment.
It is in stark contrast to England’s amateur-led Vitality Superleague, although boosted by regular Sky Sports coverage.
“When our players go back to their own environments they have no one to train with,” said Neville.
“In Australia they’re going back to professional environments. They can train during the day, they can get used to that repetitive day-in, day-out competition.
“Hopefully we can pay for more professional people in England to drive the pathway, to drive the level up.
“The number of social media posts going, ‘You’ve inspired me, I’m going to play netball again’ is because every single girl in the UK has played netball at some point in their life.”