North Shore Times (New Zealand)
Don’t forget about North Harbour sides
Has North Shore been sidestepped?
Once the home to the Northern Force, Harbour Heat and multiple national league football clubs, toplevel national sporting competition has been scarce for years on the north side of the harbour bridge.
Netball North Harbour put in an expression of interest to be the home of Auckland’s second team in Netball New Zealand’s new elite domestic competition, the ANZ Premiership, which begins next month. But missed out to South Auckland. The Northern Stars will train in Papakura and play in Manukau.
Netball North Harbour chief executive Lynette Brady says the prevailing sentiment in the region, which has the second largest player base in the country, is disappointment. What irks Brady, she says, is the fact that the Harbour region has the knowhow and facilities to hit the ground running.
Many people in the netball community assumed that a team based on the Shore would be a natural fit for the Premiership.
From 1998 to 2007, Harbour was represented in the national competition by Northern Force,
‘‘Maybe if we had more games here it would be different.’’
which played out of North Shore Events Centre. Since the Force folded, Brady says members of the Netball North Harbour region have become ‘‘detached’’ from any team.
‘‘Young players don’t see the pathway to the Mystics or the Stars purely because of where they are geographically located,’’ Brady says. ‘‘Maybe if we had more games here it would be different.’’
Brady is coming up to her sixth netball season in the role. On May 31 this year it will be the first time she has seen a Mystics game played on the Shore. When the Premiership and the affiliated Beko League get under way, Brady suspects many North Shore netball fans will get behind the Stars.
With changes to the national netball competitions, Brady says Harbour becomes ‘‘invisible’’ in the senior ranks.
‘‘Rugby has a senior representative programme and visible representation for the region at that level.
‘‘We lose our identity beyond under-19s.’’
Netball isn’t the only sport to miss out on the Shore. In 2015, North Shore United and Takapuna AFC joined forces in an attempt to bring national league football back to the North Shore.
Spokesman for the joint venture, Mark Elrick, a former All White who won the national league while playing on the Shore, said in late 2015 that the timing was right for the national competition to have a presence north of the harbour bridge. ‘‘It’s now been over a decade since the North Shore, a massive area in terms of population and football interest, was represented in the national league and the time is right to correct that by giving fans a strong, sustainable option like North Shore City to get behind,’’ Elrick said at the time of the bid.
Instead the spot in the expanded 10 team 2016/17 premiership went to Eastern Suburbs.
For the past four New Zealand National Basketball League seasons, a North Harbour representation has been missing. The Harbour Heat competed in the NBL between 1986 and 2010. Then returned for the 2012 season. Harbour Basketball chief executive John Hunt said last year that the Heat would only return if a ‘‘sustainable’’ programme could be put in place. On the bright side, North Harbour Rugby have returned to the top tier of the national provincial competition for the upcoming season.