Us vs Them: Great Australian Sporting Rivalries by Adam McNicol

Author:Adam McNicol [McNicol, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-fiction, Australia, sport, Australian sport, rivalries, Us vs Them, Adam McNicol, Holden vs Ford, Collingwood vs Carlton, Wayne Carey vs Glen Jakovich, Shane Warne vs Daryll Cullinan, Australia vs England, Australia vs United States, Australia vs New Zealand, New South Wales vs Queensland, motorsport, Australian Rules, cricket, yachting, netball, rugby league, Dick Johnson, Peter Brock, Alex Jesaulenko, Graeme ‘Jerker’ Jenkin, the Ashes, America’s Cup, John Bertrand, Alan Bond, Australia II, Australian Diamonds, Silver Ferns, Wally Lewis, Mark Geyer, State of Origin, Jonah Lomu, Stephen Larkham
ISBN: 9781743469965
Publisher: The Five Mile Press
Published: 2013-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

The Australian Diamonds celebrate winning the 2011 Constellation Cup against New Zealand’s Silver Ferns.

NETBALL

Australia vs New Zealand

In the past two decades, the rivalry between the Australian Diamonds and the New Zealand Silver Ferns has become the stuff of legend. There have been games decided in double-overtime, heartbreaking misses and numerous buzzer-beating goals. The nations have met in the finals of four successive World Championships, with the games decided by an average margin of just two goals. The Diamonds and the Silver Ferns have also met in each of the gold medal matches since netball was first included in the Commonwealth Games, in Malaysia in 1998. The average margin in those games has been only three goals. As veteran News Limited sports journalist Ron Reed wrote in the aftermath of the Diamonds’ win over the Silver Ferns in the 2011 World Championships: ‘[T]he Australian and New Zealand netball teams have developed a rivalry of an intensity that compares with just about anything else in Australian sport, including Ashes cricket.’

The netball rivalry between Australia and New Zealand dates back to 20 August 1938, when the nations met in what is regarded as the first international netball match. The contest took place outdoors on a patch of turf near the Melbourne Zoo. At that stage, the sport was widely known as ‘women’s basketball’, and its rules were yet to be standardised – for instance, matches were contested between teams of seven players in Australia and teams of nine players in New Zealand. Many other discrepancies had developed in other parts of the world since the sport was first played in the late 19th century.

Netball’s origins can indeed be traced back to the invention of basketball by James Naismith in 1891. A Canadian immigrant, Naismith was teaching physical education at a Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) school in Springfield, Massachusetts, and came up with the sport in response to calls for the development of a strenuous indoor game that would keep the local men fit during the region’s bitter winters. The name ‘basketball’ refers to the peach baskets that were used as goals during the early matches at the YMCA gym where Naismith taught.

In the years after basketball was first played, a number of female teachers decided to develop versions of the game that they believed would be better suited to women. In the conservative southern American states, the rules were particularly restrictive, while in the some of the northern states, the regulations were slightly more relaxed. In the late 1890s, an American teacher took one version of women’s basketball to Great Britain, where the sport was soon refined to suit the local tastes.

If you’ve ever watched a game of modern netball, which is played at a blistering pace, and wondered why on earth the sport has been designed to be so hard on players’ knees and ankles, academic Tracy Taylor has the answer. As she explained in an essay titled ‘Gendering Sport: The Development of Netball in Australia’:

Rules were . . . devised

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