Netball venue full to brim

THE rebirth of the Hobart Chargers basketball club has seen a reduction in Tasmania’s premier netball competition playing at Tasmania’s premier netball venue.

The Netball Tasmania-run Tasmanian Netball League has had its number of games at the Hobart Netball and Sports Centre reduced for next season from 17 to 11.

The centre is run by the Southern Tasmanian Netball Association, which says the sought-after Friday night spot will be equally shared between state netball, the Chargers and Football Tasmania’s futsal competition.

NT chief executive Aaron Pidgeon said an offer was put to the state league by STNA to play late on Saturday nights or Sunday mornings around the lower divisions.

“Friday night is our niche,” Pidgeon said. “From a club or revenue perspective, from a fans perspective, from an athlete retention point of view and even a club sponsor’s point of view, Friday night is the preference.

“We have gone to our clubs and they’ve said we would much rather be playing at HNSC but Friday nights are the ideal nights. We’ve taken a good portion of our southernbased games down to Kingborough on a Friday night.”

He said he could understand the STNA’s decision.

“It is difficult because obviously NT would like to be supporting the HNSC with our bookings and we’d like to be playing at STNA as it is the premier netball venue facility in the state and the only indoor netball owned facility in the state,” he said.

“That is no disrespect to Kingborough, … but it makes more sense to us and we’d be really happy if we could have been playing at the HNSC.

“That is the tough position we are in having to prioritise the times that are right to play for the league and having to go elsewhere as opposed to still having access to HNSC but the times that aren’t preferable for us to be playing competitions at the moment.”

STNA general manager and HNSC operations manager Phil Stoneman said the increase in the request for Friday night state league netball’s games caught them off guard.

“Everyone is a deserving participant and we just don’t have enough space to provide for the demand we have for the venue,” Stoneman said. “It really is a tipping point now where almost every hour we’ve got available to sell to customers that want it so everybody misses out and nobody has got quite what they want.”

He said netball was prioritised over other sports.