Johannesburg - There can be no beans about it – women’s sport worldwide, and in South Africa, is busting through the glass ceiling, shattering any preconceptions and cutting deep into the psyche of the public at large.
It has been witnessed in cricket, where the women’s game is watched intently, with the Proteas women adored by many. It can be seen in the success of Wafcon champions Banyana Banyana, and the massive success of 2022’s Women’s European Championship.
SA Rugby, meanwhile, are putting in a concerted effort to uplift the game for women in the hopes of catching up with the Home Unions, who regularly sell out games in Europe.
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Netball in South Africa wants in and the Netball World Cup that will be hosted in the country in 168 days – tip off for the tournament is July 28 in Cape Town – could be the doorway to achieving that.
Recently, Netball South Africa (NSA), through sponsorship, were able to centrally contract the Spar Proteas, but according to national player Khanyisa Chawane there is much more to do to leap forward from those tentative steps.
Enter the World Cup.
“The set-up that NSA has for us right now,” the 27-year-old explained earlier this week, “is that they are trying to bridge that gap (between amateurism and professionalism) by trying to give us salaries so that we can leave our jobs and solely focus on netball.
“At the moment they can’t do that for everybody. As a team, we can go out there at the World Cup and really try to do our utmost best to put netball on a podium so that SA can look at netball and say, 'this is the next step we can take for this team to become even better and to make it fully professional'.
“We want to use this opportunity to make sure that that happens.”
The introduction of new tournaments over the past few years and continued support of established championships, has certainly uplifted the profile of the sport in the mind’s eye of the SA public.
The more frequent clashes against heavyweights Australia, England and New Zealand through regular participation in the Quad Series continues that growth, while also developing the abilities of the senior national team.
Chawane agrees that there has been a paradigm shift in the standard of netball in the country and that the evolution of how South Africa plays the game is moving at pace. That change has seen the psychological aspect of playing a professional sport come more to the fore.
“The intensity of the game has changed tremendously,” she said during the launch of Telkom’s Stand Tall campaign, in partnership with NSA.
“Back then, when you were playing a centre position, you would be able to go for 60 minutes full out and you would still be okay after the game. Today’s game in a centre’s position, after half-time you can already feel yourself huffing and puffing.
“As South Africa we have adapted to that – to the different programmes we are given right now. There is more conditioning, more time in the gym.
“It’s not just about being on the court playing netball or fixing your skills. It is about making sure that we are getting our bodies ready to take that intensity.
“We might not yet be where we need to be in terms of that intensity but that is definitely a change that will happen,” she concluded.
@FreemanZAR