Netball: Transtasman foes make joint bid to shift world champs

Photo / Richard Robinson

Netball New Zealand and their Australian counterparts are joining forces in a bid to persuade the sport's world governing body to push back the traditional world championship window to avoid future clashes with the transtasman league.

ANZ Championship officials have been forced to shift the competition start date forward into summer in an effort to squeeze the season in before the Singapore world championships in July.

Next year's season will start in mid-February and has been condensed from 17 weeks to 15 weeks to give the Silver Ferns and Australia sufficient lead-in time to what is a pinnacle event on their calendars.

Keen to avoid a similar situation arising every four years, Netball New Zealand and Netball Australia, as the league's main stakeholders, are petitioning IFNA through their stakeholders to consider shifting the world championship timing for future events.

League general manager Anthony Everard said the competition needed a clear window which they could schedule their season in.

"From an ANZ Championship perspective it's our strong preference to lock down the dates of our season, we don't really want to be changing the dates [each] year," said Everard.

"There are reasons why we haven't been able to achieve that in our first three or four years, but I've had discussions with Netball New Zealand and Netball Australia, because they hold the relationship with IFNA."

Netball Australia chief executive Kate Palmer said she had already commenced talks with IFNA as the transtasman league needed to have "consistency of delivery across the years".

"We would obviously prefer [the world champs] to be later because of its impact on the ANZ Championship and the issues it creates around athlete load, but also for our broadcasters and sponsors."

Netball NZ chief executive Raelene Castle said the organisation would like to see world championship events beyond 2011 moved to late August, but stressed they would be considerate of other netballing nations' views.

"We want to be respectful of the wider netball community, because it's not all about us, but we would certainly like to have that conversation."