The 2015 Netball World Cup begins on Friday and the Australian Netball Diamonds are practically unbackable favourites to take out the title for what what would be the third time in a row.
First staged in 1963, this is the 14th edition of the Netball World Cup. Australia are the competition’s undisputed leaders, having won 10 titles, including a three-way tied championship with New Zealand and Trinidad and Tobago in 1979.
The 2015 edition – the first to be staged in Australia since 1991 – sees 16 teams in four pools begin play on August 7 at Sydney’s Olympic Park, leading up to the semi-finals and medal matches on the weekend of August 15 and 16.
World Cup organisers expect to break the record for the largest crowd at an international netball game, with more than 16,500 people expected to attend on the first day.
The Diamonds come into this year’s championship on a streak of 19 straight Test victories, and haven’t lost at the World Cup since going down to New Zealand in Jamaica in the 2003 final.
Australia and New Zealand have been the top two in each of the last four World Cups, with South Africa (1995), Trinidad and Tobago (1979, 1987), and England (1975) the only other teams in the history of the event to break into the top two.
Things could change up a bit this year however, as former player Liz Ellis has tipped England to breakthrough and contest the final with Australia. And once we get to the final, anything can happen – England may well take their first ever World Cup win.
Ellis – a three-time World Champion and two-time Commonwealth Games gold medal winner – has sound reasoning, as England’s 12 players share 893 caps between them, making them the most capped team in the competition by a healthy margin.
New Zealand, on the other hand, have a young team in what could be a boom or bust move – either they will work well and excel, or they’ll struggle and it will cost them a shot at the final.
Jamaica are the next best team, having finished third in two of the last three World Cups, and are expected to make up the top four. South Africa and Malawi are both solid sides too, but unlikely to break through to the semi-finals.
As with any international sporting event, there’s always more to the story than the favourites and the winners. Even if you believe Australia taking out the championship is a formality, there’s still plenty of storylines to follow.
Take the Uganda national team for example – no one in the Cup has worked harder to earn their spot.
The ‘She Cranes’ qualified for the World Cup at last year’s African Netball Championship in Botswana, despite reportedly running on a budget of about 600,000 Ugandan Shillings, which sounds pretty good until you convert it – $AU244 (compared to Australia’s budget of around $3 million).
The team had to organise a credit arrangement with their hotel, ran out of bottled water during games, and needed a bailout from Parliament just to afford their flights home.
Their World Cup qualification brought a major boost in funding, though still not enough to cover all the expenses of fielding a team.
Cleary, quitting is not in the She Cranes’ DNA. They started collecting at prayer sessions and church visits, and even had plans to run a car wash before this was called off by an embarrassed Ugandan government.
Who knows how far they can go, but their persistence against the odds will no doubt be one of the highlights of the World Cup, win or lose.
From the minnows to the heavyweights, short to the tall, young to the old, all kinds of stories will be told at the Netball World Cup – with another tale of Australian sporting success likely to be one of them.
Players have rejected Netball Australia's latest pay offer with former great Liz Ellis fearing the relationship between the warring parties may not be salvageable.…
More than 20 of Australia's biggest sporting bodies have joined together to support the Voice to Parliament. After weeks of announcements from the various…
Collingwood will withdraw from the Super Netball competition at the end of the season. The struggling Magpies conducted a review of their future viability…
As a member of both Collingwood and the Melbourne Storm, I have been to numerous AFL / NRL ANZAC Day double headers. This year…
Australia's Diamonds have underlined their global netball supremacy
Both sides won their last round-robin matches in South Africa.
