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When does women's sport just become sport? Netball's battle to be seen as equals
When does women’s sport just become sport? It is a question asked by many of Britain’s elite sportswomen and it is something of a minor bugbear for those who will take to the court for the start of the Netball Quad Series on Sunday.
Only a minor annoyance, because netball sits at the forefront of the women’s sport movement and the players are the first to acknowledge how their lives have changed through the growing exposure given to their previously under-appreciated sport.
But if any England players limp off court with an injury against New Zealand in Liverpool or if an Australia player produces an outlandish piece of skill against South Africa that goes viral, their gender will not matter. Women playing netball experience exactly the same highs and lows as a man playing any other sport.
“Come and watch us and you will see it’s irrelevant that it’s women playing – we’re athletes,” Lisa Alexander, Australia’s head coach, told the Telegraph. “I’m a coach and I want to be known as a world-class coach.
“I want to be able to go and have coffee with [Liverpool Football Club manager] Jurgen Klopp in Liverpool, have a discussion with him about coaching and have him respect what I have to say based on the fact that I coach the No 1 team in the world in a world-class sport. That’s where we need to get to.”
It is an ambition Alexander’s England counterpart Tracey Neville relates to. Although jokingly admitting she remains most widely known as the sister of former England footballers Gary and Phil, Neville’s standing in the world of sport has grown hugely since leading her side to a first Commonwealth title in electrifying fashion against Australia last year.
Yet as she targets further success in this Quad Series and the World Cup that follows in Liverpool this summer, she is aware that further change is needed in attitudes towards female sport.
“I get invited to a lot of events about women’s sport, women’s this or women’s that,” she said. “Sport is sport. We don’t train any differently to men.
“The money in men’s sport is obviously a lot greater and until we continue the journey we are on and professionalise our sport I don’t think perceptions will change.
“I would like [men and women’s sport] to be seen as one because that’s the way I’ve been brought up in my family. There was no comparative difference in the way we were treated.”
There are, of course, plenty of positives from netball’s huge growth over the past year. More than 130,000 women have taken up the sport since Helen Housby’s memorable buzzer-beater in the Commonwealth Games final, which ensured England became the first team other than Australia or New Zealand to win gold and was voted Greatest Sporting Moment of the Year by BBC viewers.
Sunday’s match against New Zealand in Liverpool is close to a sell out, while no tickets remain for next weekend’s reunion with Australia, the world No 1 side, in London.
“I can just tell that more people are watching the sport,” says Alexander. “I’ve got a lot of English friends and they just thought netball was something played in school. They didn’t even realise there was an English team so it’s had a definite impact.”
Alexander has an unusual measure of how netball in England is taken increasingly seriously as a competitive sport – the amount of abuse her side receive.
“Attitudes towards the sport in England are a little bit behind Australia but you’re really making up ground fast and that’s the exciting thing,” she says.
“That’s what I can’t wait to see and feel, particularly when we play England in London.
“I want to feel what the difference is. Because the crowd in the past has been very well behaved but I think they are going to get into it a little bit more, which is great.”
That match between the Commonwealth Games finalists has been earmarked as the potential Quad Series title-decider next Sunday, serving as the climax to a competition featuring four of the top five nations in the world all looking to make their last tweaks before the World Cup.
A Neville-masterminded first victory in that tournament would be an historic occasion for English sport, male or female.