48 hours: Netball missing the excitement

By CHRIS RATTUE

The trouble with netball, as a stack of people pointed out as I wrestled with this column, is that all the goals look the same, give or take a camera angle or two.

The world netball championship burst on to our screens yesterday with the sort of anticipation you feel while waiting for a bus. New Zealand versus Niue is about as Goliath and David as it gets in sport.

Commentator Brendan Telfer, a good keen netball man, found a fable in a mismatch. This was some sort of dream come true for the Niue netballers - a couple of whom are still at school - who had to fork out $4000 each to get to Jamaica.

And fair play. We should salute the minnows of sport, for their determination through trials and tribulations, even if in this case they could hardly sling a shot at goal.

But seriously folks, as a world championship opener it was a dud that looked more like a practice game in the local gym.

Even at the best of times, netball has a major flaw. Scoring is boring. When only one team is doing it, the bore becomes even more of a chore to watch.

Imagine in rugby if the only way to score a point was by putting the ball in the scrum.

Because netball shooting, while a little more demanding skill-wise, is only marginally more exciting.

Or imagine if the try-scoring rule went like this. Once you got within five metres of an opponent's line the game stopped, and everyone else stood around with their hands on hips while one bloke was given the ball in front of the posts and did a swan dive over the tryline.

Or in soccer, if, once the ball got in the penalty area, the ref called a halt to proceedings and arranged a penalty kick. And all the goalkeeper could do was stand on the spot and impersonate a synchronised swimmer. No screaming 30-metre shots, no overhead kicks, no dummies, feints, backheels or brilliantly-timed tap ins.

And golf. A new rule, No. 974.24 states: once you hit the ball onto the green you pick it up, stick it 10cm from the hole, and tap it in. (I've tried this during particularly bad rounds and it's not very rewarding, especially when you miss.)

No wonder only a couple of people are allowed to shoot in a netball team, because they would have trouble finding any more who would want to do it. It ranks alongside watching someone change a light bulb.

Even the celebrations are subdued. Netball shooters should get time-outs after scoring so they can run to the crowd, with their team-mates leaping all over them. A bit of fist-pumping and bib swirling wouldn't go amiss. Then we would know they're happy.

On a good netball day, as when New Zealand play Australia, patriotic urges can turn netball shooting into a reasonable watch, especially if you have ears that don't launch violent protests against the high pitch which excited netball audiences generate.

(And while we're on about netball, I've never understood that carry-on where the whole crowd bangs inflatable sticks together in unison. We should leave those highly-organised fun days to the Koreans.)

Anyway, back to the world championship. This is an easy mark if netball isn't your go, because world netball is on a par with world rugby league, which put out a ranking list a few years ago that managed to judge some mob like Moldova as the 14th-best team on the planet.

Presumably the presence of teams such as Niue in Jamaica is supposed to give some credence to the concept of netball being a world game.

Niue even has a ranking - of 12 - but they might as well be 112, which is almost the number New Zealand put up against them.

Let's face it. Netball doesn't seem much interested in trying to help itself by allowing New Zealand to nick the best South African and Fijian players, Irene van Dyk and Vilimaina Davu.

Those two can live wherever they like, of course, but when it comes to test-match netball, they should have remained South African and Fijian.

It wouldn't have made a jot of difference to the New Zealand-Niue result, but it would have given more meaning to the concept of netball as a world sport than what happened on the court in Kingston yesterday.

High points

The way Ali Lauiti'iti set up the Warriors first try against Manly - it's game on again for the Warriors with the great second-rower back in action; Victor Matfield's try in the pulsating rugby test match at Cape Town.

Low point

That netball game from Trinidad. The world netball championship can only get better.