Netball on the way up

Looking at Sports Leader and all other sports-related websites we do not see enough of the poorly defined “Cinderella” sports , which I would define as netball, hockey and perhaps swimming.

For some reason these sports attract a low degree of sponsorship which keeps them pigeoned holed as “Cinderella” sports.

I spoke to Mimi Mthethwa, president of NSA about 3 months ago, where she outlined an innovative approach to coaching for the Spar Proteas preparation for the World Netball Championships.

They broke the game down into specific areas and placed coaches into the specific areas for improvement with former Protea and now head coach Elize Kotze putting it all together.The results are there for us to see: an amateur group of professionals that have committed to excellence and they went to beat Malawi in the play-off after losing to the world No 1 New Zealand in the quarter-finals.

Beating Malawi elevates the Proteas to the No 1 team in Africa for the first time and our world ranking is a credible 5th! The Proteas centre Erin Burger was named player of the tournament. Only now do we hear talk of some sponsors showing some interest as well as Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula requesting meetings with NSA to look at the way forward in relation to making netball professional. Long overdue I believe.

Where to from here is hopefully the question on the mind of the NSA executive: goals need to be set and I would say that cementing our 5th place in the world must be a major goal.

One has to look at the current talent and develop youngsters that can back them up so there is a smooth transition of excellence.

Some real sponsorship is needed to complement the committed sponsorship from Spar.

Personally, I was as proud to support the Proteas netball team as a South African as I am supporting Bafana Bafana, the Springboks and the Proteas cricket team.

Long may this improvement continue for netball in SA and well done for this amazing achievement.