Hey you women the balls in your court
April 18th, 2008, 7:52 pm Hobbies News
No question, the ANZ Championship is a courageous initiative by the New Zealand and Australian netball bodies.
Ideally it will provide a model by which womens sport in this part of the world can provide an avenue into professional sport for a number of women, rather than just the special few who earn enough to concentrate only on their sport as is the case at the moment.
The game is being changed to better accommodate television, which is only fair given its the TV bosses who are ultimately writing the cheques that help to pay the players salaries.
However, like anything on television,the ANZ Championship will have to rate or it will get dropped like a hot rock.
Having just finished marathon pioneer Kathrine Switzers autobiography, it will be particularly interesting to see whether professional netball can find a big enough audience.
Switzer wrote about the curious reception she would get as a runner in the days when womens sports were an oddity.
While the men were usually happy to have a women amongst them, and men would be encouraging from the sideline, it was the female spectators who would sometimes turn away in embarrassment at a woman who actually dared to break a sweat in public.
During her long training runs through the country people would sometimes try to run Switzer off the road — and more often than not they would be women.
Promoters have tried many ways to get people to watch womens sport %26mdash; all with a common theme.
If it doesnt involve a bikini it will almost certainly involve tighter shorts or a shorter skirt.
Thats because many have given up on trying to get women to watch their own competing on the television and have resorted to selling sex to enhance the male percentage.
Getting women in general (and before the letters and e-mails start flooding in, I know some women do enjoy all sport and make an effort to watch it) to watch any sport, and especially womens sport, is like teaching Monty Panesar to field or Chris Martin to bat.
Its the reason why womens golf, womens basketball and any number of other sports have struggled to be anything better than a niche attraction as an add-on to their male counterparts.
Women wont watch it.
Its not sad, or bad, its just where society is at.
No doubt a large number of men will turn on to watch the netball on a Monday night over the next few months.
Later theyll gather in knitting circles to discuss the relative merits of a zone versus a %26quot;man-on-man%26quot; defence.
But television needs a female audience that will watch and watch enthusiastically to help garner the advertising support that ultimately makes the whole merry-go-round go around.
Are enough women prepared to support their own? Well know by the end of the season.
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