The Netball Show
S7 Ep45: NWC 5 Year Ani : Inspire (22nd July 2024)
The net will show with Flyhawk, Raising the bar for netball and winning sports. I'm Zara Buck and this is the netball show with Flyhawk, a special set of podcasts as we celebrate five years since the netball World Cup was held in Liverpool. This episode we reflect on how the tournament was key in inspiring the next generation of players, players that we see today, in the sports at all levels. Boxing Choices was the world netball campaign, known then as INF, that was launched and we spoke to Caroline Barker and Shani Norder at the launch event. Caroline and Shani, creating choices is a brand new INF campaign, right time to launch something like this? Absolutely. You've got the world's attention here in the greatest city on the planet. There's a fucking radar city in the planet behind where we can do that, behind Melbourne, Australia. These ausies are so competitive, they have a choice. We're on the same team now, we are. Creating choices is about creating a global netball team at which Shani is number 13. Yes, what number are you? Apparently I'm in number two. You are number two. You did just tell me I'm in number two. You just told everyone at launch, I'm in number two, can you just realise that you don't know? Thank you. You told me I'm in number two, but that's all right. Marjorie composes herself, it's about creating choices, right? We have a choice to get into the game or not, to go out and enjoy stuff. I'll keep on talking to you. I know, thank you. Just talk to the professor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fine. So what creating choice is about is giving people an opportunity, a choice to be part of the game we love, netball. To do that, we're creating the world's biggest netball team. Where you are in the world, you and E, whether there's someone who's just started playing the game at the age of five, where they're playing up against a wall, whether an international whether they're playing in the Super League, in the Sun Corps, wherever they're playing, they can be part of the global team. Why? To join those conversations so that you can meet your mates, you know, all your friends that you've met through netball. I know everyone that follows the podcast, right? I know. I mean, why wouldn't you follow the original, I mean, I say the original best 15 years ago, I was doing one, but don't worry about that. I mean, the new original and the best podcast, and why wouldn't you connect with all those people that you've connected with, that you've those friendships that you've made, those connections that you've made, those opportunities you've had through netball? And that's what creating choices is about. It's about meeting people like Shani, being part of her team and being part of that conversation across the world, being part of the biggest netball team. Yes. But it's also for players like me who have been at the elite level, and it's like being with people like Carolyn, it's like being with people like you Andy, and we can meet everyone and be together. I think so many people put athletes or elite athletes on such a pedestal, but what this is doing is bringing us back down to ground level to say, this is where we can go, and this is what you can achieve, where you do make those choices, but that's also not what sport is about, sport is about connection, it's about the community, it's about getting together, and it's about supporting each other, and that's exactly what this platform does. And we can help women and men all over the world be able to make these choices that they may not have had the confidence, may not have had the ability to be able to make before, and by having this platform, we can do that, which is so exciting. And is that something that would have helped you when you were shy and retiring, Shani? I think for me, I've come from a very privileged world, and I had choices. I had parents who could give me choices, but that's why I want to give back to the people who don't have those choices, that's what this is about. So you know what, yes, it may have helped me, but I know that it's going to be able to help so many more people, all the more we could ever imagine, all around the world that don't have the privileges of the likes of what we do in Australia and in England. But even when I was growing up and was a goalkeeper by a nature of the fact that I was six foot, if I had someone like Shani on my team, if I could get experiences from Shani, if I could know what it was like to be a world-class defender to be in those moments, what are the tips that I need for when I land properly? How do I go up against, this is me right now, for the purposes of radio, rolling off Shani, how do I go up against the best in the world and come out on top? If I'm playing on my little playground in Essex, I want to feel like I can be Shani. I'm wearing the same bib, both got GK on our chests, and we can both be part of that team. Rachel Dunn spoke about the importance of inspiring the next generation. Having a home world cup gets it more visual, I think, because it's on home saw, it's happening in the right time zone, and it's actually the buzz around the fact that it was in our country, and I think we had the 2018 Congo's and the huge success there, and I think on the back of it, we then had the actual event itself and the support that we had and having a home world cup for people to go to was kind of huge, and I think the momentum is continuing to grow, and again, the England success at the World Cup last year, getting to the final, I think we've had quite a lot of events that have been rolling and hopefully, and all these things are helping shift the momentum on and on, and it's great to see that we are, as a nation, successfully kind of competing in these things and hosting these things, so I think it's, yeah, I've seen a massive difference since I started playing, and the exposure, yeah, it's kind of grown and grown, and we need to keep pushing the momentum forward, so, based on an international and a national level, with this new launch of Super League as well. And England's Jade Clark admits it's a sport for everyone, and she spoke to Nat. I think when I was younger, it's definitely perceived as a schoolgirl sport, because people didn't really know it, when I was younger it wasn't on TV, so we didn't have those role models to look to, and now, like, people are taking it seriously, people know how aggressive, how fast it is, how skillful it is, and it's not just the women that play, so many men have come up to me, and just all the men that I've seen that watch netball absolutely love it, so it's really, it's a sport not for little girls to watch, with little girls, with the mums and the dads and the whole family, it's something that everyone can just get involved in, you've even never watched it before, there's just nothing better than watching a close gaming netball, it's so exciting. Yeah, 100%, and it's so good that people are finally cutting around to that, so when we were younger, we didn't really know who was on the England team, it wasn't a thing to tell you, so how does it feel to now, like, today, for example, be surrounded by all these kids, you're like one of the pictures of you, and feel like you're kind of a role model for them, how does that, it's like a weird feeling? It's just weird, it's really nice, and it's something that we've wanted for a long time, yeah, like, when I was younger, I looked up to athlete, like, Sally Gunnell, and Colin Jackson and things like that, so it's really cool, like, now, we're the ones that they're looking up to, and little girls couldn't go, "I want to be a netball, and I want to do it as my job," and it just would be unheard of when we were younger, so, and I think it kind of, thinking about things like that, it does take the pressure away of playing because it's also, you think, "I'm part of something bigger than what color medal I get, it's part of, like, creating that legacy," and it's something that we can be part of long after we stop playing, is we're part of getting people out and playing and making it the most popular sport for girls, and it's the sport for everyone. England Thorns player, and Fly Hawk Ambassador is James Thompson-Boston. It's Jimmy, the captain of the England Thorns, and where to start with the World Cup. It was so good seeing everyone from around the country going towards Liverpool to see all those amazing athletes, and looking at it as it started to inspire the rest of the nation to pull on a bib and get down to maybe their social league, maybe inspire them to push for that one squad stronger than they already were. Looking at it from a perspective of the England Men's and Mixed Netball Association, you can definitely see that a lot of people had been inspired to get on court because the first time ever, only a couple of weeks ago at an England Thorns camp, there was enough young boys there to start an under-19 squad and get them training, and if that was only five years ago, who knows what another five will do, so let's see where we get to. Tracy Neville spoke to Nat. It's been amazing to see how netballs progressed over the last four, ten years, really. How much of a difference do you think the kind of centralised programme and becoming like professional has made to the performance of these girls? You talk about passing the baton on, and you can't just talk about the last four years, you've got to talk about the heritage of where the sports come from, the people have contributed, the coaching, the players, and you know, that Commonwealth Games Gold was about all of that, it's surmised all of that. Now, the cherry on the cake was, I wanted, when I come into this programme, I wanted to try and make this sport professional, and the way we could do that at the start was giving centralised contracts, and there's some great examples out there, we're in hockey, in cricket, where they've started to give the central contracts and they've gone on to succeed, and for me, that was hugely important, and I think at the time it was a real challenge for the players, particularly the old ones, but I think we've got a programme now that we don't only integrate people in, we also integrate people out, and we do recognise that people have a lifestyle outside of netball and career opportunities, and you know, you see some great examples of that within this Rose's 12, we've got doctors, we've got lawyers, and the fully professional people, and we don't actually stop that, so being professional as a woman isn't just about playing the sport, it's about being professional in your personal and your sport in life, and I think that is something that we forget sometimes when we go to sport, that we don't actually create a person, we actually create a product, and I think that was one of the values that I really wanted strongly through these Rose's that they're not animals, they're actual people who, you know, have a lot of investment in it, and that is also the contribution from their family and friends, and ensuring that they have time with them as well. Joe Adams, CEO of England Netball at the time, explained that it was important to build on the awareness of netball directly once the netball World Cup was finished. After these major events, what does everybody want to do, and you see it, you know, there is that Wimbledon factor, we see that it's the moment after people have watched it they want to have a go, if they've got to wait three weeks, they just don't do it, that that moment goes away, and I call this, it's the spike, it's that moment when they see it and they think I want to go, we're actually talking about Amazon is buying it, it's a bit like I see the product I want to buy, and that's what we're trying to do, so we want people to see it, love it, and immediately on that Monday go and turn up at a call and have a go, and hopefully once they do we keep them, but it's that immediate effect that a world class competition can have, and I don't think another sport has tried to do that yet, so I know when I shared my idea with a development team they were all a bit like oh my god can we really do this Joe, and I was like this is netball, we can do anything, come on let's do it, and it wasn't live and we've had a great response for people pledging their court, so yeah we want schools, we want leisure providers, anybody just to give us a court on that Monday for free, we'll deliver a coach there, and let's put sessions on for people who've never had a go, but they've watched it and thought I'd love to have a go. Cardiff Dragons, Liam Middleton, was yet to join the Super League in 2019, she went on to play with some internationals at Storm, and what were some of her memories? It was just really exciting you know having known that at the time that I was coming over to England and obviously it being played in Liverpool, they set up such a good stage for World Netball, and yeah just really enjoyed watching it. Some of the members of the Diamond Squad, any particular inspirations in that sport at the time, maybe Seabas, Gretz? Yeah obviously Greta Wen didn't she, so that was amazing, obviously such a great athlete, and Phyllis Liskwanger at the time obviously knew of her, so yeah amazing to watch all different athletes from different teams. And what kind of influence and uptick did you see back at home following the netball World Cup? Back home in Australia like everyone is so internet ball, so yeah it wouldn't just be a rare thing to be awake at you know God knows what time in the morning, but you know everyone kind of in your netball team at the time would be awake and discuss what was happening and you know talking about different scores and that sort of thing, so I think the whole kind of netball community and country really got behind it at the time, but yeah just a really exciting time for netball. Inspiring the next cohort of players will be a key ambition for next generation netball, managed by Jimma Wiseman and Becky Nash. Jimma and I were just talking and we just said like you know we've both got girls and actually how can we make sure that they're involved, they're always asking questions and NGN got launched and we did it. We've mastered classes, we've had Tamsin for a few, we've had Joe Tripp and then we started to hear that loads of adults actually wanted to have master classes, you know like big fans have followed Tamsin for years with Stacy Francis, that sort of thing, so then we put some adult sessions on, not about making money because it doesn't make money in those sessions, those ones are just giving people that have either have a massive passion for netball, maybe they dedicate all their time to training others and they wanted to come along and learn some training, so then we started to put some of them on. We do sessions for five year olds onwards, so our littlies come to it, we do some camps, we do some pre-seas and stuff, so it's a real mixture of just looking at what was needed in the area and what you could make sure that people had the opportunity for and just making sure we moved it around really, so everyone in Essex is such a strong county for netball, there's so many girls that are just a bit like ourselves that we've said they just work, work, work non-stop and they're just desperate to improve and actually we've had people from Surrey, from Hertford, you know we've had people from all over from in London, so it's actually blown us away how well it's gone and we've just loved every second, absolutely loved it and you're doing it with one of your best mates, so it's, you just have so much fun and we're both really similar in how we want to coach, our most important thing is that the kids have fun, yes they've got to learn, but if we instill in them the love for netball early and how much it can be with more important things like the friends you make, the communication, competitiveness, fairness, you know all of that if we instill that in them as well hopefully they'll carry it on whether they go elite or whether they just play local league and you're keeping fit you know as long as you're enjoying the netball and that's the most important thing to us. As we move towards a new era in the sport here in the UK you can find your local club either to play or volunteer at englandepble.co.uk, netballscotland.com, whalesnetball.com and netball ni.org and the latest from World Netball is online at netball.sport. The netball show is now also available via Sky HD, Sky Q and Sky Glass to let's sport and we're on the podcast trail.
Reflections on how the 2019 Netball World Cup influenced the next generation of players that we see today performing at the hightest level