Aussies reaffirm rules on imports

Netball Australia has confirmed its Super Netball import policy is here to stay amid a growing chorus calling for Australia to let its domestic competition become the English Premier League of world netball.

Opinion has varied in the week since England’s stunning Commonwealth Games gold-medal triumph had Diamonds coach Lisa Alexander pointing the finger at Super Netball’s no-restrictions import approach.

But where Alexander said Australia’s heartbreaking one-point loss was “our high-performance system working for another country”, Netball Australia chief executive Marne Fechner felt it was a case of the whole game benefiting from the league’s high quality.

Coupled with commercial factors, she said there were no plans “at this stage” to scale back its rule change allowing clubs an unlimited number of international athletes on their roster — a huge increase from the maximum one permitted in the previous ANZ Championship.

“If we were purely looking at it through a high-performance lens we might make different decisions,” Fechner said at yesterday’s Super Netball launch.

“But we’re not, we’re looking at it from a sport entertainment product about commercial growth, and that’s really important — it’s why this product exists.

“We have to balance the pinnacle of our game being the Diamonds and there’s no question about that — they are top of the mountain in terms of pathway.

“But for us we aim to deliver the world’s best women’s league . . . and a really diverse international group of athletes competing in it is good for the game.”

Five of England’s Games grand final starting seven currently ply their trade in Australia, a factor coinciding with the nation’s first netball gold courtesy of NSW Swifts shooter Helen Housby’s final-second goal.

On the flipside, New Zealand’s absence from the Gold Coast podium contributes to evidence of the extent Super Netball is moulding the international game.

Since the break-up of the transtasman arrangement, when the Kiwi teams were sacrificed to make way for three new Australian franchises, New Zealanders are allowed to play in Super Netball but are barred from representing the Silver Ferns if they do so.

Last week Diamonds great Liz Ellis wrote in Players Voice that to cap imports would be “short-sighted” because “it’s critical for the success of world netball”. — AAP