In the year 1872 a man called Dr James Naismith who was from Canada, invented basketball. There was also another American called Dr Toles who was visiting England in 1980. He introduced basketball to that country whilst he was over there. The men in England did prefer to play the traditional sports from England, but the ladies who couldn’t play those sports enjoyed playing basketball.
14 years later in the year 1895, to play basketball the ladies would use long broomsticks for the goal posts, and wet paper bags for the nets, also they would play this game on grass. The women would wear long skirts, bustle backs and button up shoes which made running hard and their sleeves would make it hard to move their arms. Because of this it made dribbling the ball and throwing long passes really hard. The women then changed the game around a bit and changed the uniform. In the year 1898 the netball court was designed, it was divided into thirds and the number of players to play the game went from 5 to 9. They used a smaller ball, which at the time was a soccer ball. There were 2 umpires, 2 scorers and 2 people as timekeepers. When people would play netball back in those days, the net didn’t have a hole at both ends so the ball could come straight through, instead it was only the top end of the net that was opened. After someone from one of the teams scored a goal, one of the umpires would have to climb up a ladder and reach in to get the ball out of the net. Netball became a recognised sport once the official rules were published 1901. When the sport first came into existence, it was called ‘ladies basketball’. Not long after, the game became more well-known and each country was starting to play it, the countries all had their own rules. Some countries even had their own name for the game. The name was only changed to netball in Australia and New Zealand in 1970. In 1928, the official all Australian |
Women’s Basketball Association was formed. Even though this was the year that the Association was formed, there were many games of interstate netball played before this year.
Ten years later, the first ‘Interstate’ match was played against New Zealand in the National Championships. The game was held in Melbourne and Australia won 40-11. In 1939, Australia had formed a team that was going to head over to New Zealand for a tour, but because of the First World War, the tour was postponed until 1948. When the tour did finally take place, Australia had cut their team down to 7 players. But New Zealand were still playing with 9 players on a team, but especially for this tour they played 7 players. It was only in the year of 1956 that New Zealand started playing with 7 players. Australia was the first international team to visit England the country where netball originated. Australia won 54 of the 57 games that they played in England. They beat England in the test 14-11. There was a meeting held in London in 1957 to discuss an international code of conduct that would be trialled in many different countries. The only countries that sent out representatives to the meeting were England, Australia, New Zealand, Northern Ireland,South Africa, USA and Wales. The First World Tournament involved 11 teams and was once again held in England. Australia went through undefeated and have held the world title 9 times now since 1963! |