Netball: Conference system to stay despite backlash

Maria Tutaia of the Mystics defends against Casey Kopua. Photo / Getty Images

There'll be no backtracking from ANZ Championship officials on the league's controversial conference system, despite a growing backlash from fans.

The transtasman competition was this year split into Australian and New Zealand conferences, under which three teams from each country advance through to the finals.

From the outset the new structure was the subject of much derision. Critics argued the model favours the underachieving Kiwi sides who would otherwise have no hope of featuring in the playoffs.

Those arguments proved founded when the Southern Steel advanced through to this year's playoffs on the back on a 23 per cent winning record.

The Magic, who this weekend host the NSW Swifts in the semifinals, also made it through to the playoffs on a negative win-loss record, and the Mystics finished the regular season top of the New Zealand conference without beating an Australian side.

While ANZ Championship general manager Andy Crook admits the poor performances of the New Zealand sides have undermined the new model, he said the organisation is not considering a change after one season.

"We always review things, but at the moment there is no discussion about going back," said Crook.

"There is a lot of work to do in New Zealand, but that's nothing to do with the conference model.

"The strategies and high performance environment needs to be right if teams are going to be competitive, and that's up to Netball NZ to address."

Crook argued that in many ways the conference system has been a success. Australia has seen a marked increase in crowd numbers this season, already breaking attendance records with potentially two games remaining across the Tasman.

"From the very start, one of the key objectives of this model was making sure our franchises survived and started thriving in a really clustered market-place. We simply cannot have our teams out of finals contention after five games - it doesn't make sense commercially."