Super Netball draw focuses on difficult task of pleasing all
Never has a netball draw had to do so much: please a rusted-on fan base, entice new fans in an increasingly competitive market, build TV viewership, and work around a World Cup being held on the other side of the world at the midpoint of the season.
But in revealing the 2019 Super Netball fixture on Wednesday morning, the game’s governing body has signalled its intention to appease as many of the growing roster of stakeholders as possible.
The third instalment of Super Netball will begin on 27 April and to accommodate the Netball World Cup in Liverpool in July, will be split in two, taking a break after nine rounds, between 23 June and 27 July. After the World Cup, it will feature five more rounds, before finals begin and the grand final takes place on 15 September.
The split format has raised questions about potential player burn-out and the capacity for the Australian team, and other internationals in the league, to adequately prepare and then return for club duties after the World Cup. Players will have just 19 days after round nine before the tournament in England begins and six between the gold medal match and having to be back on court for round 10.
In what looks like a distinctly-Australian-flavoured nod to this, the longest road trip in Super Netball – to Perth to play the West Coast Fever – will be undertaken by the NSW Swifts in the post-World Cup round.
While Swifts Helen Housby and Natalie Haythornthwaite will be in the England squad and Sam Wallace will play for Trinidad and Tobago, it’s unlikely the NSW side will have any players in the Diamonds’ squad.
The team with potentially the most Diamonds, the Melbourne Vixens – who could lose Caitlin Thwaites, Liz Watson, Emily Mannix, Jo Weston and Kate Moloney, as well as likely South African, Jamaican and Malawian starters Ine-Mari Venter, Kadie-Ann Dehaney and Mwai Kumwenda – have a home game that round against the Adelaide Thunderbirds.
Adelaide have Silver Fern Maria Folau, Roses Beth Cobden, Chelsea Pitman and Layla Guscoth, as well as Jamaican Shamera Sterling, in their squad, so who takes the court in that round 10 match at Melbourne Arena will be fascinating.
Across 2019, there will be five more Saturday games – despised by “netball people” as they clash with local games, but seen by Netball Australia as vital to growing the game’s base – than last season, but 12 will be played at night. The remainder will be on Sunday.
Two matches each round will be broadcast live on Nine’s main channel – which saw viewership rise 25% last
year – and two matches will be exclusive to Telstra TV. All matches will again be available on the Netball Live app.
For the first time, there will be a game on the Monday of the Victorian Queen’s birthday weekend, between the Vixens and Collingwood, and like last year there will be one Friday night fixture, on 17 May between the Magpies and Thunderbirds at the Pies’ new home, Melbourne Arena. Last season, the Pies shared Margaret Court Arena with the Vixens.
In the first round, new Collingwood recruits Geva Mentor and Kelsey Browne will face their old team, reigning back-to-back premiers Sunshine Coast in Melbourne and the week after in Perth, there’ll be a grand final rematch between the Lightning and the Fever.Nat Medhurst devotees – angry at the star’s dumping by the Fever at the end of the season – will have to wait until round five to see the now-Magpie take on her old club. That match on 25 May is to be played in Bendigo at the 2,000-capacity Bendigo Stadium. Launceston also gets a game this year; the Pies versus Swifts on 17 August.
Given the complexities, the season shapes up as one of the most crucial for the world’s premier netball league. Can it balance the competing needs of the national program and the league itself? Can players carry an increasing workload? Will TV audience keep heading north? Only time will tell.