Netball: Australia sends message

Norma Plummer says splitting the Transtasman champs will boost Aussie talent pool. Photo / NZME

The Ockers are bracing themselves for the emergence of a "golden age of female sport" in the Land Girt by Sea.

So what, you may well ask, is happening in the Land of the Long White Cloud?

If Netball New Zealand is anything to go by it seems the No1 female code in the country needs to scramble to the drawing board for a renaissance of sorts.

It's time to eat humble pie.

Our netball at the soon-to-be-defunct ANZ Transtasman level, as well as at test level even though the Silver Ferns make most finals in a fishbowl, isn't up to scratch.

Netball Australia has unhooked their Kiwi cousins from the intravenous drip feed of an eight-year-old recurring Tassie concussion and rightly so. It's a sentiment former Diamonds coach Norma Plummer endorsed.

With Aussie franchises winning seven of the eight crowns and the recent yawning results against their Kiwi counterparts, something had to eventually give way.

A nanny state is seldom ever the Epsom salts to development in any code and Australia Netball's verdict has put everyone out of their misery.

If, in close to a decade, netball in New Zealand is what it is today then something is terribly wrong.

Packaging it any other way would have resembled a fortune cookie.

The frilly TV product of snazzy colours and flamboyant figures told a lie all those years and it's time to return to the grassroots.

The success of any code isn't only in the presentation of a commercial commodity but more significantly in its substance.

Sure, akin to Hawke's Bay, the number of girls slipping on bibs at junior levels may well be the envy of others.

The burning question is how do those youngsters compare with counterparts from the rest of the regions in the country and when juxtaposed with their Aussie peers?

In the fledgling history of the two-nation competition, not one Bay player has graduated to the ranks of Central Pulse, the Wellington-based franchise that embraces this province in its catchment area.

Enough said because it'll be interesting to see how other Kiwi franchises fare at graduation ceremonies from their sprawling regions.

Commendably the reconstituted Hawke's Bay Netball has since nurtured a few teenagers who are in the Central age-group equation to create history.

With Netball Australia reverting to its national championship from next season to nurture its own regions teeming with talent Netball NZ has no choice but to do the same.

A win-win situation from what superficially appears to be a huge loss.

No one can argue against the intrinsic value of the transtassie tourney offering starry-eyed teens a beaten pathway to netball heaven.

But that also is tantamount to saying sevens rugby or T20 cricket is the passport to the promised land of the All Blacks and the Black Caps.

The glitz and glamour of transtassie netball is a classic case of false economy that feeds the ego of a handful of players.

Ironically the market forces have been at work in Australia where prime-time TV, as well as NRL and AFL (Aussie rules) clubs, have provided the landscape for the female footprint.

The plan is to include three more teams to the five flagship franchises for a revamped national championship, albeit amid some grumblings from states that fear player poaching.

Whether rugby, rugby league or any other code will mirror such co-investment in netball here remains to be seen but it's encouraging to know the uncoupling manoeuvre has prompted a timely unexpected rethink on developing and growing netball in New Zealand.

In plying her trade for the NSW Swifts this season, Laura Langman was perhaps subconsciously reflecting an elite foresight.

Speculation that Northern Mystics attacker Maria Tutaia and the like may gravitate to the Aussie arena is simply a healthy sign and Netball NZ should give them its blessings.

It would be infantile to play the trepidation card on the grounds of supposedly diluting the ensuing New Zealand national championship.

With concern among Aussie franchises that three more teams will adulterate their champs, it's fair to say Kiwi players will become marketable.

Not only will the Kiwis deserve their contracts but also become ambassadors who will return with inside knowledge of what the Silver Ferns coach Janine Southby and her assistant, Yvette McCausland-Durie, will treasure in devising blueprints to beat the Diamonds.

Conversely, the vacuum the chosen ones leave behind will only beckon other domestic netballers to fulfil their ambitions (the obvious sign of development).

Australia Netball and Channel Nine/Telstra have yet to sign a contract on their 17-round competition over five-year terms but the emergence of women's sport should agitate protagonists into action here.

The fiscal cross-semination of codes aside, female codes in Australia are way past the flirting stage with TV moguls.

The Women's Big Bash League mirrors their male counterparts' eight city-based T20 franchise competition in the viewership stakes.

The W-League soccer, in the mould of the men's A-League and minus any Kiwi sides, also is humming.

Aussie rules football's eight-team women's competition starting next year also spurred Australia Netball into action.

What will it take to tickle Netball NZ and other female codes here?