With one regular season round remaining in the ANZ Championship, the stars have aligned to give the competition some final round games and a finals series that the AFL and NRL would dream for.
Heading into the final round, it would seem likely that Australia will be represented by its three largest east coast city clubs, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, while New Zealand will be represented by historical powerhouse Waikato.
Since its inception, the ANZ Championship has had a strong run of marketable clubs achieving strong results.
However, one suspects that only in best case scenario planning would netball administrators have dreamed of the combination of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Waikato in a finals series that will no doubt garner incredible interest, exposure, attendances and audiences.
However, talk of finals may perhaps be premature with one round to go with five teams in contention for four places. On Saturday, the Northern Mystics must defeat the Queensland Firebirds to secure a finals spot while the Queensland Firebirds motivation will no doubt be a 13-0 undefeated regular season.
While this achievement would no doubt be admirable, it may perhaps be celebrated with little enthusiasm given the Sydney Swift’s capitulation out of the finals last year after an undefeated regular season.
Come Sunday, the Melbourne Vixens will show down against the Sydney Swifts at a sold out Hisense arena, which at best will be a sudden death battle to make the finals or at the very least, a battle of third versus fourth to determine who will host next week’s sudden death showdown in week one of the finals.
Either way, given the circumstances of the game and its coverage live on Channel 10, the match has the potential to draw a television audience capable of making the A-League and Super Rugby question their relative audience figures.
While the race of the title is still an open field, one thing is certain: we are about to witness several weeks of fantastic netball, which will reaffirm why netball and the ANZ Championship has become the premier Australasian hoop sport competition.
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