Netball Tasmania reaffirms desire to join Super Netball league following Collingwood’s review bombshell
Tasmania has put up its hand to become the home of a new Super Netball club if one of the country’s biggest is to collapse. Here’s what we know.
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Netball Tasmania CEO Mitch Coulson says they are ready and waiting to join the Super Netball league should Collingwood’s review result in the Magpies handing back its license.
The country’s top netball competition was thrown into chaos on Tuesday following Collingwood’s announcement that it was undertaking a review of its netball program following both on and off-field struggles including poor performance and financial haemorrhaging across its seven year existence.
With Netball Australia CEO Kelly Ryan releasing a statement on Wednesday confirming the organisation was committed to an eight team Super Netball competition in 2024, the possibility of Tasmania putting forward a bid to enter the league should Collingwood exit is one Coulson says is a very real possibility.
“You are never quite sure when an opportunity will present itself,” Coulson said.
“We will obviously wait and see what the outcome of the review is that’s being done by Collingwood and we are keeping in close contact with Netball Australia but for sure there is a sense that this may open a window earlier than we’d anticipated around the Super Netball league and what opportunities they are for Tasmania.
“From our perspective it’s really exciting to see what might happen over the next few weeks and months.”
Coulson said that while it would be a tight time frame to launch a club from scratch, he was confident with a world-class venue already in place that Netball Tasmania had the capabilities to build a team ahead of next season if they were required to do so.
“Our intent and desire (to join the league), going back over many months, has been expressed really strongly to Netball Australia,” he said.
“I think we (Tasmania) offer a number of unique opportunities and strengths for the game of netball in this market that I think you are honestly hard pressed to find elsewhere.
“It’s absolutely at tight time frame (to start a team) but from our perspective you never quite know when an opportunity will present itself and if that is what was required then it’s possible.
“We have MyState Bank Arena that is a world class venue. The (Tasmania) JackJumpers play there, pack it out and it’s a great atmosphere. They are a summer sport and the Super Netball League is played as a winter sport so that would work beautifully in terms of packing out the venue year round and a stadium is always key when assessing a market in terms of if it’s suitable or not.”
Netball Tasmania last put a bid in to join the league in 2021 before Netball Australia chose not to expand the current competition while the Magpies currently have a $1.23 million dollar agreement with the state government to play one pre-season and one regular season fixture in the state for the next three years.
Coulson said that nothing had been presented to Netball Tasmania around a co-license agreement or relocation from Collingwood but that they remained “open-minded” to how elite netball looked in the state moving forward and said games would likely be split between MyState Bank Arena and Launceston’s Silverdome if and when Tasmania entered the competition.
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