Where does the future of the ANZ Premiership lie?

There seems to be a general consensus that some change is needed to New Zealand's domestic netball competition but what that change might be is less clear, writes Bridget Tunnicliffe.

After seven years of ANZ Premiership netball there is a feeling that the league is getting stale.

What is obvious is that there's no way that we will see the resumption of a trans-Tasman competition akin to the ANZ Championship, which ended in 2016 when Australia and New Zealand decided to part ways.

In the nine years of the competition only one New Zealand side won the title and the gap between the Australian and New Zealand teams seemed to get bigger.

The Australian sides were dominating and in the final season not one of the New Zealand teams beat an Australian team on Australian soil.

There's no appetite on either side of the ditch for a return to that.

Australia went from having five teams in the old league to eight teams in the current Suncorp Super Netball (SSN) competition, which makes sense with the number of players they have.

Any expansion of the SSN is likely to be motivated by a desire to give more opportunities to Australian players.

Netball New Zealand has been involved in discussions with Netball Australia about introducing cross-over games at the end of the respective domestic competitions.

One example might be that the top two teams from each domestic competition square off against one another.

But a couple of games is not going to be enough to help New Zealand players get the exposure that Silver Ferns coach Dame Noeline Taurua recently said they needed.

It also has to be attractive to Australia.

If it was after the SSN final, the best players from the Australian teams might not bother playing in some kind of add-on to their season.

The best option might be to pool the best players at the end of the ANZ Premiership into two teams to then compete in Australia, which would also give fringe Silver Ferns plenty to play for during the ANZ Premiership.

Cutting the ANZ Premiership from three rounds to two and folding the top New Zealand contingent into the final round of the Australian competition could be ideal.

Otherwise a netball equivalent of cricket's IPL, which drafted the best players in the world in a month long tournament, would be great for the sport in general but needs a financial backer to come along.

The conversations that have swirled since New Zealand's fourth place at the World Cup might not be happening if shooter Grace Nweke didn't get injured early in the tournament.

Had Nweke been there the Silver Ferns might have had enough firepower to beat England and get to the final. But they would not have been good enough to beat Australia and if number one is where they want to be it's still worth having the discussion.

With their unlimited import policy, the Australian league also attracts the top Jamaican and English players.

Stars coach Kiri Wills believes New Zealand "absolutely" need to have some cross-over to give players exposure to the suffocating defence, which is a signature of the Australian league.

"Whether or not SSN think they need us - I think that's the question," Wills said.

"We need to do something about our competition in terms of making it different and more attractive because it has been the same for seven years."

Wills said while the tiering system introduced a couple of years ago to get more consistency in player payments had made teams more stable, there was also a drawback.

If players don't feel the need to shop around for a better deal at another franchise, then the fans are seeing similar line ups year after year.

Shooter Grace Nweke has been with the Mystics since 2019.

In 2021 she made her Silver Ferns debut and the Mystics won their first Premiership. The Mystics won the title again this year and had it not been for an injury last year to Nweke the Mystics would probably have the three-peat.

Predictable results aren't good for fan engagement. In the SSN teams have found a way to somewhat negate the West Coast Fever who have the best goal shoot in the world in Jhaniele Fowler.

Wills would also like to see the two-point shot introduced to the New Zealand competition.

"When Australia first brought it out I was 'no we've got to play the traditional game'. But what I saw at the World Cup was all of those players that play in that competition ...they are unafraid of putting up that long shot."

Wills said she received far more inquiries from import players this year, with a stand-off over the Collective Player Agreement dragging on in Australia, but generally the players wanted to hold out for an SSN contract.

"So we have to think about what is our offering to get the top cream of the crop here in New Zealand and playing."

ANZ Premiership teams can contract up to one import player but Wills would like to see players from Pacific nations no longer counted as imports.

"I would like us to be able to carry at least one of them and an import from outside of those Pacific countries."

She said while it was important to protect the player pathway, the competition shouldn't be dumbed down in order to do that.

"There's value in our players fighting for their position in these teams and having that outside pressure from those people means that the people coming up through the ranks know that they've got to work hard and they've got to be at their best to try and get into one of these teams."

Mystics assistant coach Rob Wright, who was previously a head coach in the Australian league, believed there was room to increase the limit to two imports.

He believes some sort of cross-over games would be good for New Zealand players.

"There's a whole lot of New Zealand players that aren't getting exposure to that other style in the SSN, not only the Australians but the Jamaican and England players.

"Pooling New Zealand's best players would be a unique concept and something slightly different because it would be players playing with different people so there's all sorts of benefits to it and just something a little bit different," Wright said.

But he does not think the Silver Ferns are quite in the dire straits some people seem to think they are in.

"I think there's plenty of depth in New Zealand. I think there's players outside of the current team that are good enough to be in the team.

"The Silver Ferns themselves I believe actually get plenty of exposure to Australia. They are probably playing Australia now a minimum of five times a year, which is fantastic."

New Zealand has always been second to Australia on the depth front but the recent shock loss to an under-strength England, shows how much the world's third ranked nation have caught up.

The Netball Super League in the UK allows up to two imports and the competition has benefited from having players from countries like South Africa, Malawi, and Uganda.

Then there's the question of whether New Zealand players should be allowed to play in the SSN.

Under Netball New Zealand policy, to be eligible for selection in the Silver Ferns, players must be signed with an ANZ Premiership team.

Netball New Zealand's head of high performance Stephen Hotter told RNZ that there were no plans to relax that rule saying "we would like to have our best players playing in our competition."

It is an understandable stance but there might come a tipping point when the board feels it has to loosen those rules.

The last time the board reneged was after the 2018 Commonwealth Games when the Silver Ferns came fourth and the pressure was on with the World Cup only a year away.

It gave an exemption to Laura Langman, who had previously been barred from playing for New Zealand, because she was playing in Australia.

The 2018 Commonwealth Games was seen as such a disaster that an independent review was commissioned. The review Netball New Zealand has undertaken in the wake of the World Cup result is internal and standard practice after each pinnacle event.

Players can apply for an exemption and they tend to be reserved for senior players but surely it would be more beneficial for New Zealand players to play in the SSN earlier in their careers.

A player like Kate Heffernan could grow her game more quickly, rather than a player near the end of their career who was given an exemption as a reward for service to the black dress.

Given the level of competition to get a spot in an SSN team, there would only be a handful of Silver Ferns able to get a contract anyway.

Whatever direction the ANZ Premiership heads in, nothing will change until 2025 as next year's fixtures are locked in.

But it's clear the sport is at a crossroads and some decisions will need to be made in the face of growing competition from other codes.