President’s Report

Netball Mainland

“Kaua e mate wheke, mate ururoa” – Don’t die like an octopus, die like a hammerhead shark.

It is said that octopus are renowned for their lack of resistance when captured, whereas a hammerhead shark will fight to the bitter end.

This whakatauki is a reflection on the year that has been. Despite the challenges that COVID-19 has presented, we must never give up, no matter how hard the struggle.

A focus for 2021 was to rebuild the Mainland Zone to continue to support and empower the development of local capability and opportunities across the 17 Netball Centres. To do this, we all needed to connect to the Netball in New Zealand strategy, Poipoia, to ensure we were aligned in our shared outcomes for Netball.

Poipoia guided us to frame up our goals and actions as we looked at other ways of operating more efficiently. This saw the implementation of the partnership model between clusters of Netball Centres, to work together to maximise resources.

The Mainland Centres achieved many highlights in 2021 including an increase of four percent in our player base, with a 13 percent increase across the ANZ futureFERNS programme.

Christchurch Netball Centre, Netball South Canterbury and Nelson Netball Centre continue their involvement with the National Fast5 Activation project, providing an alternative variation of the game to their local rangatahi. This work was supported and led by their Youth Advisory Groups (YAGs). In addition, MidCanterbury and Selwyn Netball Centres have engaged youth and established YAGs.

Walking Netball has cemented itself in several of our Centres, with regular opportunities for the community to participate. At Mid-Canterbury Netball Centre, an additional offering was established solely for those with an impairment or disability. This has seen fabulous uptake with an average of 15 participants attending each week.

Netball Centres provided a range of learning opportunities for their local coaches, umpires and umpire coaches, with the support of a strong network of coach developers and umpire coach developers. Nelson Netball Centre provided an integrated learning environment for both coaches and umpire coaches during The Good Oil Tactix home game; Christchurch delivered a Community Coach Award Level 1 weekend and development series; Selwyn developed a network of club coach convenors; and Mid-Canterbury provided online learning workshops for their clubs.

Thanks to the introduction of two NetballSmart Centre Activators, Julia van Dyk in Christchurch and Ani Waitai in Nelson, the NetballSmart message is spread further, and we can look to make positive and sustainable structural changes within Centres.

The Celebration Box Netball NZ U18 Champs was the only tournament that was able to go ahead in 2021. Eight teams represented their Centres, as well as eight umpires representing the Zone. Christchurch had two teams make the top 16 and two of our Mainland performance squad umpires officiated the top eight games.

Michelle Stagg is one of our top umpires in the Zone with her efforts seeing her officiate the National Netball League. She was also a reserve umpire for the ANZ Premiership. Rianna Oosthuysen efforts sees her on the NNZ Zone Umpire Watchlist.

The first NNZ, cluster National Development Camp, took place in our region from 13–15 January in Ashburton. This was an amazing opportunity for 15 Mainland players, three of our performance squad umpires, and two coaches on the Performance Coach Qualification pathway.

The Good Oil Tactix entered the 2021 campaign with a largely unchanged team, though new addition Karin Burger proved significant, later being named ANZ Premiership Player of the Year.

What was also new was the structure of the franchise with the administration of the Mainland side sitting separate from the community arm and under the directive of NNZ.

Significant crowds, sold-out merchandise and a more engaged fanbase were other highlights of the year with the home match on 25 July against the Mystics seeing over 5,000 fans in venue.The on-court performance didn’t disappoint and after a rocky start the proud red and black side, led by captain Jane Watson, fought for a place in the Final Series. The title was not to be in 2021 with the team going down by two against a formidable Mystics line-up.

A huge thank-you to all of the incredible sponsors but particularly The Good Oil, SKOPE and Trident Homes for your commitment.

Netball South

Since the establishment of Netball South nine years ago, one of the strategic goals of the Zone has been the financial sustainability of not only Netball South but also the Ascot Park Hotel Southern Steel.

It was therefore with a sense of achievement at the March AGM that we announced a $90,000 surplus, bringing us to positive members’ equity for the first time in nine years.

The road to positive equity was as a result of six consecutive years of surplus for Netball South, and five for the Ascot Park Hotel Southern Steel. It was also a richly deserved departure point for retiring Chair Paul Buckner and director Kerry Seymour, both of whom exhausted the tenure limit of nine years set down by the Zone’s constitution. Colin Weatherall departed as NNZ’s representative in March as well. Paul, Kerry and Colin brought enormous experience and governance expertise that will be sorely missed by the board. Existing director Dean Johnston has stepped into the Chair’s role, while Noelene Scott was elected to the board at the AGM and Jackie Barron was appointed as the new NNZ representative.

Many of the South Centres breathed a sigh of relief in 2021 as most, if not all, of their winter competitions were completed before a further COVID-19 lockdown was announced by the Government in August. It is a credit to the diligent work of our Centre volunteers and staff in planning and delivering competitions that participation rose by 10.9 percent during 2021. Meanwhile, recently released Voice of the Participant satisfaction survey results bring more colour to the picture by identifying that most South players are generally “very to extremely satisfied” about all aspects of their Netball experience. Netball South partnered with the Dunedin Netball Centre (DNC) to offer a Netball leadership programme for Maori and Pasifika rangatira in 2021. Featured on One News, the six-week programme was led by Southern Steel shooting sensation Tiana Metuarau and co-ordinated jointly by staff at Netball South and DNC. Another innovation was run by Invercargill Netball Centre as they offered a Term 4 Netball competition just for rangatira boys, attracting 14 teams in total. Fresh opportunities like these are scattered throughout the Zone as Centres begin to consider the differing needs of their members and experiment with the structures of their competition and event products.

The Southern Steel welcomed five new young players at the induction of the 2021 ANZ Premiership pre-season. Retaining our experienced coaching and management team led by Reinga Bloxham was key to a high-performance environment that brought out the best in these players. Not fancied by the commentators after a six game/six loss pre-season record, this young team shocked many with an 18-goal win in their first round-robin game against the Tactix. It was an exciting beginning to a heart-stopping season that saw the team win 10 of their 14 round-robin games and host the Elimination Final in Invercargill. The team has a very special culture captured in the fresh new design of its dress which the players brought to life, and three Southern Steel players went on to being selected for the Silver Ferns while English player George Fisher was selected for the Roses. On the commercial front, the Southern Steel dealt with significant challenges that weighed heavily on our financial position. Membership sales were reduced by 29% as long-term loyal members opted not to return after the Ticket Rocket debacle of 2020. But thanks to some clever marketing, casual sales were stronger than normal, particularly towards the end of the season, offsetting the impact of a decrease in membership sales. The benefit of diverse revenue streams is the spreading of risk. While one stream flounders the other can shine, and this was certainly the case with the commercial partners of Southern Steel. In 2021 the Southern Steel family of commercial partners held strong and steady while the arrival of new partners lifted cash sponsorship revenues by 25 percent.

Netball South thanks the volunteers and staff at the Centres for their passion and commitment to the game, and the Southern Steel family of funders, commercial partners and fans for their unwavering support. And a big ‘well done’ to the Netball South staff and board for a great year of hard work and success.