Renae Hallinan of Australia and Shannon Francois of New Zealand contest possession during game five of the Constellation Cup series. Photo / Getty Images.
New Zealand and Australia look set to meet in pool play of the 2015 Netball World Cup after a radical overhaul of the event format for the next tournament.
The international netball federation (INF) today announced their plans for the next event in Sydney in 2015 with the revised competition
format the most significant change. The tournament - now known as the Netball World Cup, rather than championships - will be extended to 10 days, with every team to play eight games, rather than six, while there will be an increased emphasis on the regional qualifying events.
One of the main criticisms of the previous event format was the lack of competitive matches during the round robin stage, leading to the top four nations cruising through the tournament with predictable ease, before the inevitable New Zealand v Australia showdown in the final.
But a change to the pool composition means there will be more competitive matches during the round robin, with the number one and number two nations in the world to be grouped together in the same pool, as will three and four, five and six and seven and eight.
The draw will be allocated based on the rankings in July next year, but as New Zealand and Australia have been the top two nations in the world since the current rankings system was devised in 2009, it is almost certain they will meet in the preliminary round of the tournament. After the preliminary round the teams will be re-ranked, with the top eight and bottom eight teams splitting off in the qualifying round.
