International Netball Raises the £Net

Playing against Team Northumbria at the weekend we faced a distinctly international line up. On court for the opposition were Lara McLeod and Elissa McLeod, both from Melbourne and Megan Hutton who played for Southern Sting in New Zealand last year. This has definitely strengthened the Team Northumbria squad and made the league more competitive as a result and they are not the only franchise to be looking further afield to recruit more players – Brunel, Leeds and Thunder all have internationals on the court too.

The flow of traffic is not all one way, however. In the past, Amanda Newton , Karen Atkinson and I have all played in the NZ league, as has Helen Lonsdale (prior to her successful move to coaching – she also apprentice coached in Melborne) and Tracey Neville spent a season in Australia . All of us benefitted from playing a different style of game and at a level of intensity that wasn’t available in England at that time – playing week in, week out at a standard our superleague is starting to build up to now.

This year, a new league is starting in Australia and New Zealand – the Transtasman league. 5 franchises from each country will compete against each other – the Australian teams will play the other Australian teams twice and the New Zealand teams once each and vice versa. The cross-over fixtures will require considerable travelling for the teams (a 4 hour flight from Sidney to NZ, 7 hours from Perth ) and the players will need to commit to their teams at least part-time if not full-time. The league heralds another leap forwards for netball professionalism – each franchise has a player salary cap of AU$270,000 (approx £120k) with top players rumoured to be commanding six figure packages when sponsorship and other commercial opportunities are taken into account.

Our England stars have also been in demand from the franchises in the Transtasman league with several of the current England athletes being courted. Confirmed so far – Sonia Mkoloma is heading over to play for the Wellington-based team ‘The Pulse’ and Geval Mentor to the Adelaide Thunderbirds where she will be sharing the court with the highest paid player in the league – the Australian GD – Mo’onia Gerrard.

It’s an exciting time for them and for netball as we move further towards the professional era. We might have to wait a few years for our Superleague to catch up with the player salaries, but with the first full-time coaches being employed in our league this year, it shouldn’t be too long before the players can follow suit.

ANZ League