Coronavirus: Super Netball season deferred for at least two months

Netball Australia announced on Monday that the start of the 2020 Super Netball season would be deferred by two months.

NSW Swifts players celebrate winning the 2019 Super Netball grand final. The start of the 2020 season has been put back due to the coronavirus pandemic. Picture: AAP

After weeks of speculation and crisis meetings, Super Netball has become the latest competition to fall victim to coronavirus, with Netball Australia announcing on Monday that the 2020 season would be deferred by two months from its scheduled start date of May 2.

The league cited the need “to protect the health and wellbeing of fans, athletes, staff and the broader community”.

The Super Netball independent commission will now meet at the end of May to reconsider the situation, but confirmed the season would not begin any earlier than June 30.

Super Netball chief executive Chris Symington said that at this stage, the ambition from the clubs was to find ways to deliver value to their members over the coming months rather than looking at refunds.

“We will look at ways that we can still service (our members), and hopefully in the back half of the year see if we can hopefully deliver a league that makes good on their memberships.”

Symington said that a full ­14-round season had not yet been completely ruled out, but that it was difficult to say what format any competition this year could take in a crisis that was changing day by day.

“Look, it’s hard to tell right now, isn’t it?” he told The Australian. “We haven’t ruled it out completely. We will be looking at a number of different, creative ways that we might be able to achieve that over the coming months.”

All clubs have suspended training, and interstate and international-based players will be allowed to move home.

The league will meet with the players’ association on Tuesday to update the union on the plan for the months ahead.

The immediate priority is ensuring that those players who want to travel home can do so safely, followed by a discussion about contracts.

Symington said player payments during the postponement were an ongoing discussion, and that “nothing is off the table at this stage”.

Netball Australia also announced that it had begun talks with its international counterparts with regards to the Constellation Cup and Quad Series tournaments, due to be hosted in Australia and New Zealand in September and October.