Netball: Tracey Neville wants to increase male participation in netball

2 years ago 97

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Former England Roses head coach Tracey Neville says that netball is a "gender neutral" sport which can appeal to both men and women.

She hopes that the Rise Again Festival, which will see all 11 Superleague teams compete against each other as well as two men's teams, will showcase the sport to a wider audience.

"We shouldn't make it exclusive or put barriers up," she told BBC Sport.

The tournament will take place on 11 and 12 December in Manchester.

London-based Knights and Manchester-based Spartans are the two men's teams who will feature in the tournament in Belle Vue, which will see sides compete in games made up of eight-minute quarters.

"This is not only about the competition but also testing players under physical pressure, showing that netball is a gender neutral sport and a sport that facilitates both genders," said Neville.

"At the moment in the UK there are not a lot of men's teams out there and there isn't a lot of facilitation for them to get involved so this is also about giving them a demonstration within our event."

England Netball recently announced its partnership with England Men's and Mixed Netball Association (Emmna) to help grow the men's game in England and support World Netball's desire for the sport to be included in the Brisbane Olympics in 2032.

"We're trying to expose our sport to many different people. It's always been classed as schoolgirls and women that come to the events but this is about getting men involved and saying that actually men can do this," said Neville, who is now performance operations director at Manchester Thunder.

New Zealand held a Test series against their national men's team in October and Neville said: "Once we get male representation within those environments, young boys will feel like that they have a role model to aspire to - we shouldn't make it exclusive or put barriers up."

There are now 20 clubs with established men's and mixed netball teams in England, with almost 20,000 men playing the sport.

"The wider audiences is key for netball to get bigger and better. At the Commonwealth Games when we won gold in 2018 we saw netball catapult its audiences and fan engagement levels and we want to do that more," added Neville.

Netball's bid to get more men involved in the sport is a clear attempt to boost hopes of the sport making it to the Olympics and Neville says that is the "greatest aspiration".

However, during her tenure as Roses head coach, Neville said she was aware of the amount of funding available to the sport but didn't want any of the money being used to start up a men's team.

"We had £1.2m and I didn't want any of that funding going over to try and start up a male equivalent - that might have been quite selfish at the time but it wasn't about excluding men, it was more about knowing that we're not a sustainable entity," she said.

Netball relies heavily on funding from Sport England and Neville said that meant she had to be "ruthless" in her decisions.

"Now I'm sat back and I'm a mum and I'm a bit more casual - I think getting men involved is definitely the way to go," she said.

Without a place in the Olympics, netball is heavily dependent on the Commonwealth Games to showcase the sport on an international stage. Neville said the Games' decision to cut compulsory sports on the programme to just athletics and swimming was "disappointing".

England won gold at the 2018 Commonwealths with a last-second 52-51 victory over Australia and then went on to win BBC Sports Personality Team of the Year and Greatest Sporting Moment.

"Netball is one of the pinnacle events and we showed that at the last Games - so to take that sport away and eliminate it from that competition when it's the only huge competition it's got would be a huge disappointment to me," said Neville.

"Every sport has to have an avenue and that shouldn't be taken away from them - I feel that netball is a huge success. If we look at comparisons then netball is up there for being one of the best team sports in the competition."

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