ENGLAND NETBALL GIRLS’ GOLDEN GLORY
England make history by beating red-hot Aussies Housby’s last-gasp shot sparks wild celebrations
IN THE end, it was a woman with a zoology degree who made a monkey out of netball’s food chain. But Helen Housby and her mates did so much more than mess up the old cage.
Better than the jolly hockey sticks of Rio? Maybe. Most unlikely result involving any nation in the past 11 days? Quite possibly. A tie that proved there is still great beauty to be found in the oddities and anachronisms of the Commonwealth Games? Certainly, with big golden bells on.
And that’s because there’s simply no other stage for the kind of brilliant madness we saw yesterday — the netball World Cup is lost inside the borders of its sport, and the Olympics don’t want to know. Don’t include it, never have. They prefer skateboarding.
So the Commonwealths are as good as it can get for netball and what followed here was as good as any sport could possibly be.
Forget for a second the expectation that Australia were going to sandpaper England into dust. That context is important, of course, but just go on the sport for now and the final phase of play in the match. By that point, after 59 minutes and 53 seconds, the teams were tied at 51-51 and had never been more than four points apart.
That’s when the ball gets to Jo Harten, a machine in this match who has kept England neck and neck from hard angles for most of f an hour. She has a shot to win it, just as she did with the last throw of the semi-final against Jamaica.
But she misses and 8,000 Australians go nuts. Then they stop shouting because there’s a lucky bounce and the rebound falls for Housby. She misses it off the rim. More screams and louder this time. But there’s a whistle through the riot and a penalty awarded for a contact foul. Incredible. Another go. One second left. Housby flinches at the marker, gets a sliver of space, scores. And then pure bedlam.
First up, Kadeen Corbin does a back-flip. Then Tracey Neville attempts an awkward run with a flag but gives up and just screams instead. Housby is yelling with bulging eyes at no one in particular. It’s bonkers.
‘This is the best day of my life and it’s the best day of all these girls’ lives,’ Housby will later tell the press.
But to understand that it is necessary to reinsert the context, which is the tales of the individuals and the collective involved in the absurd match that played out yesterday.
Australia have been in every Commonwealth orWorld or World Cup final ever staged and their players earn a good way north of £45,000 a year. They are on billboards, recognised in supermarkets. Only New Zealand have ever matched them in history, a sport of two superpowers and a few others who get occasional scraps from the table.
That has always included England. They sit on the second rung with Jamaica and the distance to the top is big.
England made the World Cup final in 1975 but have won only bronzes or less ever since and six of their squad are on between £12,000 and £24,000 funding in the amateur Superleague at home. Around half a dozen play in New Zealand or Australia so there is real quality there, particularly from Geva Mentor, who ranks among the best in the world. world She plays her club netball in Australia’s top league, where the average wage is around £36,000 a year, but there was no way she was meant to get a win here. No one called that a fortnight ago.
And that is why they danced like maniacs.
‘The big two in netball has been Australia and New Zealand for too long and it’s become almost stale,’ Mentor said. This was her fifth Games and finally a winner. ‘It has always eluded me but I never stopped dreaming.’
Then there was Chelsea Pitman. She won a World Cup for Australia before switching to her father’s country. That caused a stir. ‘My heart and my home is with the Roses,’ she reaffirmed yesterday.
For her part, Housby couldn’t stop shaking her head at what had played out. ‘I just remember having the ball in my hands and then running away screaming,’ she said. ‘As shooters it can be a lonely experience, doing your own training and shooting. This just couldn’t have gone any better.
‘For netball in England, all the little girls at home, I want them to be inspired by this. We certainly didn’t have this kind of success to look up to when we were growing up.’ A few feet away, Neville was bouncing between calling for more money — ‘We have a massive noose around our necks with funding’ — and excitement at a message on her phone.
‘Gary’s wife sent me a video of Gary,’ she said. ‘He was literally up shouting at the telly, going, “C’mon, Helen, go on,” as if he actually knows these players.
‘I remember when him and Philip won the Treble in Barcelona. I was on tour at the time and I was screaming in a room at 4am when the goal went in.’
It was a similar time of night at home in England when the netball women were raising hell in Australia, destroying food chains on their way. But in a sense that has been the tale of England’s trip — the big names flopped, the smaller ones excelled, tables turning all over the place.
Thankfully, in the most gloriously unexpected way imaginable, the dynamic finally worked in their favour.