By JULIE ASH
Jamaican Molly Rhone has replaced New Zealand's Sheryl Dawson as president of the International Federation's Netball Association - and is talking a change of format and marketing strategies.
Rhone won the job over Netball Australia's chief executive Pam Smith, who is the vice-president. The term is for two years.
A new six-member board was also appointed. It contains no New Zealanders.
Rhone said the board had already discussed several issues, including a possible change in format for future world tournaments.
"Certainly we want to have a finite number of teams, which could be 16 or could be 24. So you get to the world champs by playing in regional qualifying tournaments.
"I think it is going to be the way to go because netball is growing so fast."
"Now we have 74 countries playing the game, no longer can you have an open-ended number of entries."
She said the location of the next world championships had also been discussed, but a decision on whether it would be held in South Africa, Australia or Fiji would not be made until November.
Rhone, who will retire as the president of Jamaican netball in December, also has big plans for the IFNA organisation, starting with their administrative setup.
"We have been operating for a long time with one person in our secretariat, and that is not sufficient personnel," she said.
"Secondly, we need to look at our marketing. It is in dire need of funds. We have so much to do in the areas of technical expertise and umpiring.
"At these world championships for the first time all the umpires are international umpires, but you will see there is such a disparity.
"There are six from New Zealand, five from Australia ... we have to catch up in the other regions, so we need to put a plan in place, but to do that we have to fund it.
"We have to get a proper marketing proposal."
