History of Men's Netball

by Peter Turk CEO of Australian International Men’s and Mixed Netball Association Inc

History of Men’s Netball Internationally

Since 1985 Australia and New Zealand have been involved in a Trans Tasman series, every second year. The series is played in Australia and New Zealand on a rotating basis between our Open and 23 and under Men’s Teams. Other countries that have Men’s teams that we are aware of including, England, Canada, USA, Pakistan, Fiji, Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea and Jamaica. Their levels of international competition aren't known. It is our intention to keep working on these countries to get involved and in time have all of these countries competing at the one event.

International Recognition

Currently only women's netball is recognised officially through IFNA. It is one of AIMMNA's goals to achieve recognition for Men’s and Mixed Netball and the forthcoming Fiji Championships is the first step.

Concepts behind the Fiji Championships

As previously mentioned Australia and New Zealand have a long History with playing each other in the Trans-Tasman Cup Series, which we will continue. However both the New Zealand Men’s Netball Association and the AIMMNA Boards felt that we need to expand our horizons for the sport. At a meeting during the Australian championships in 2003 we discussed the viability of a world cup type event with New Zealand proposing Fiji as the ideal location. New Zealand President David Palaamo, contacted Alice Tabete from the Fiji Sports Council and floated our idea past her. Alice was receptive to the idea and a meeting was arranged between us in New Zealand during the Trans-Tasman tour October 2003. The meeting was positive with an agreement reached by New Zealand, Fiji, Cook Islands and Australia to run what is the first Men’s and Mixed International event in Fiji August 2004. Many countries were invited to participate and were initially very responsive to being involved. Unfortunately the biggest problem faced by our sport is the lack of financial support from Governments and Business Sponsorship as Men's and Mixed Netball is in the shadow of women's netball. Virtually everyone competing in Fiji has self funded the trip to represent his or her respective country at this event. We believe that this event will demonstrate how different and more exciting Men’s and Mixed Netball is and that the success of this event will stimulate the countries that didn't make it to Fiji not miss the next championships.

Scope of Participation

A national membership of over 350,000 and 541 affiliated associations. Including the registered numbers of Netball Australia, there are an estimated total of 1.2 million netball players in Australia (many male, female, mixed and school competitions are not required to register with Netball Australia, Netball Australia resources are utilised by these groups however)

(Taken from Netball Australia web site)