The debate continues about netball making it to the Olympics. Although a reported 20 million women play netball in over 70 countries it still hasn't made it to the Olympics and why should it - to give Australia or New Zealand a sure Olympic goal medal?
I have been involved in netball for the last 25 years and the same teams dominate the top, they are serious barriers at all levels not just in terms of actually physical standard of play but in the rules of the games and its officiating. I look on and have a great belly laugh when I read of the umpiring problems happening down under.
We in the Caribbean have just 4 international umpires, two men from Jamaica, Dalton and Chris, and two ladies, one from Barbados, Marion, and the other from Trinidad and Tobago Anne Marie. The region has not had another umpire qualified in almost five years. How so?
I do not know what the criteria is for becoming an Olympic sport , maybe when I have some time I will explore this however in terms of netball I can write the script for future Olympic Games once we are approved. Six teams qualify for Olympics based on the new seeding developed by those countries who the format benefits. The little old Caribbean countries cannot afford to travel to some tournaments so despite their skill they remain unseeded. The Olympic Games teams on every occasion will thus be Australia, New Zealand, England, Jamaica, South Africa, maybe on occasion Papua New Guinea, Cook Island, Fiji and Samoa. And maybe on the odd occasion a Malawi, Barbados or Trinidad might sneak in.
Anyway, if you feel strongly about netball being an Olympic Sport join the Face Book group and agitate.
2 comments:
Finally someone who understands......Y cant netball become an olympic sport.......Ive been hearing that bcuz netball doenr have many sponsors and crap like dat......thats y it cant bcome an olympic sport......I strongly feel that NETBALL should bcome an olympic sport...based on the level that netball is it, it should bcome an olympic sport......Ppl, i jus had to let that out, lol...
Netball is apparently an Olympic sport (since 1995) but has never been added to the Olympic programme. I can't see why Netball should be left off the Olympic programme when other seemingly less popular sports have been included such as handball and BMX racing... even beach volleyball seems a bit dubious too me - If one argues that one problem with including netball would be the dominance of the same teams each time(like NZ and Australia), you only need to look at beach volleyball which has been dominated by the USA and Brazil.. doesn't seem to be a problem for the IOC though. In fact, I think it encourages less dominant teams to improve!
And so at the end of another Olympics I'm waiting and wondering when Netball will get its chance in the sun. We already have a World Ranking list: http://www.netball.org/ifna.aspx?id=94 .. it might be true initially that teams like NZ and Australia dominate but I think including Netball on the Olympic programme would go some way in encouraging more matches to be played in addition to promoting more professional training even in the smaller countries and this could only be good for the sport.. as an optimist I could see the use of smaller regional tournaments to improve the quality of play and increase chances of qualifying for the Olympics, were netball to be on the programme..
Anyway, for the present time I remain an optimistic dreamer :-)
Post a Comment