Hunter Left Out Of New Second-tier National Netball League
Newcastle Herald
Saturday February 2, 2008
NEWCASTLE was overlooked as a base for a team in the inaugural Australian Netball League when Sydney was named as the home for both NSW sides this week.
The Hunter lost its direct link to elite netball when the Hunter Jaegers were a casualty of a revamp to the now-defunct national netball league.In its place this year is a 10-team trans-Tasman competition, boasting just one representative from NSW in the Julie Fitzgerald-coached Sydney-based Swifts.The restructure left many of the country's elite netballers out in the cold, but Netball Australia on Thursday unveiled plans for a reduced national league to be run over six consecutive weekends in August and September and featuring representatives from every state and territory.Both NSW and ACT will boast two teams in the ANL.Netball NSW general manager Carolyn Campbell was a major player in the push for an underpinning program to the trans-Tasman competition and was thrilled there will be an avenue to cater for the players who missed out on contracts for the new semi-professional league.Campbell said there were no plans to base a team outside of Sydney but did not rule it out in the future.The Jaegers attracted the biggest crowds in the national league."It was never our intention to take a team regional at this stage . . . we need to crawl before we walk," Campbell said.She said the competition will be run on a "shoestring budget" in its infancy, adding the most important thing was "at least there is something there"."It provides players with the opportunity to travel and play, and that is a really critical learning curve for them and will definitely provide them with an opportunity to make it to the next level," she said.The NSW teams will be selected from the NSW State League and will not feature players from the trans-Tasman league.Former Jaegers coach Jon Fletcher will coach one of the NSW teams.
© 2008 Newcastle Herald
Share This