By Marcus Uhe
There’s a wind of change sweeping across the South East’s netball landscape with the creation of a new competition for netball teams unshackled from the traditional ties of a football club.
The South East Premier Netball League (SEPNL) will begin in 2024 for both junior and senior netball players, from under 11 to four levels of A, B, C and D grade – outdoor netball on a Saturday afternoon.
Among the clubs to have already committed to the competition’s first season in 2024 are Berwick, Beaconsfield, Hampton Park and Berwick Springs, which operates as a separate entity to the Berwick Springs Football Netball Club in the Outer East Football Netball League, with conversations well-underway to bring more local clubs into the fold with a resemblance of the old South East Football Netball League.
Founding member of the SEPNL and Berwick Netball Club President Lani Mannays said the competition will allow clubs and players to get back to netball, without the distractions of league and administrative politics.
“It’s giving us another option in the South East where you don’t have to have a netball club attached to a football team, but you’re still able to play home and away netball,” Mannays said.
“It’s something that we’re really keen to do and probably wanted to do for a while, because every year it was a case of, ‘Are Outer East going to keep us?’, ‘Do we have to look for something else?’, ‘What are our options?’, to the point where we decided that we don’t have to rely on other people anymore, let’s just get this up and running and make it happen, and get back to netball.
“Focus on netball, that’s what it should be about.”
Berwick and Beaconsfield were both recommended to find other netball competitions to compete in after Outer East clubs voted with overwhelming support in favour of removing standalone netball clubs from the competition, due to the fixturing issues presented with having different football and netball clubs involved on the same day.
Both club’s football affiliate departed the Outer East in previous seasons to play in the Eastern Football Netball League, however netball is played on a Friday night in those competitions rather than a Saturday afternoon, which was seen as an unfavourable option.
Southern Football Netball League netball fixtures, meanwhile, are largely played at a centralised location of Dingley’s Rowan Road Reserve.
By contrast, the SEPNL will fixture games as often as possible at venues to coincide with football clubs, in order to maintain a football-netball atmosphere without the strains of a fixed connection.
For Mannays, having a new league in place for the Berwick players to sign up for immediately as an alternative to the Outer East was crucial in securing the necessary numbers to participate.
“I think we probably would have ended up like Cranbourne, where we had no participants anymore,” she said.
“None of our girls are interested at playing down at Dingley on a Saturday in a place where we can’t use our own facilities and have that home crowd, none of them are definitely interested in playing on a Friday night.
“We know for sure that we probably wouldn’t have had the seniors.
“We would have had juniors but you can’t grow the club if that’s all you’ve got.
“We want people to realise that you don’t have to run out of options and only play on a Friday night, or down at Dingley Village on Saturday, if you don’t have a football club, which is the main reason why we started this.”
The groundswell of support means the competition is looking likely to begin in 2024 with administrators welcoming expressions of interest from local clubs.
Those interested in joining the revolution are encouraged to check the league’s Facebook page.
