Former Malawi Queens star, Mary Waya believes sponsorship will be key in growing netball in the continent. Although several countries, including the four that have qualified for the 2023 Netball World Cup edition, have participated in the global competition none have managed to win the tournament yet.
Only three countries, Australia, New Zealand, and Trinidad and Tobago have won the competition. The Queens, Spar Proteas, Uganda, and Zimbabwe are the four nations that will represent Africa in the 16 team tournament taking place at Cape Town’s International Convention Centre from 28 July to 6 August.
South Africa, who have participated in more World Cup tournaments than other teams in Africa, are the only country to have walked away with a medal. The closest the Queens, who debuted in the 1995 edition, have been to the top was in fifth position.
Waya reckons that the only thing that makes the top four nations trump African countries is the resources, sponsorship deals, and professional leagues in those countries.
“Netball has changed in Malawi. There’s now a big gap that I have identified that we don’t have qualified coaches. The game is changing every time and you need to be on the same level with the top five countries that are dominating netball. When I was still playing we were on the same standard but now netball has become advanced. We see players going to the gym, they do a lot of physical fitness in the gym. We see players having diets and nutritionists and psychologists. We have a lot in netball nowadays but in Malawi, we don’t have qualified physical trainers, nutritionists, and psychologists, people who can help us to grow in the game,” explain Waya.
The former goal shooter was one of the youngest players to debut in an international match at the age of 14. She featured for the first time in the red, green, and black in 1982 during a tour to Zimbabwe. She played in more than 200 matches for the Malawi Queens in a period of about 25 years before she retired.
“The other thing that has made our netball go down is (the lack of) sponsorship. In our day we had companies sponsoring teams from government institutions to private institutions but since I stopped playing netball around 2008-9, companies started to pull out teams. They left a lot of teams without sponsors, only the clubs that were attached to government institutions (that survived).
These clubs were for the police (officers) and the army and to go there, you’d have to be an employee of the army or police. That has given us a big hiccup because players have to walk to come to training and have to finish in time to walk back, there is also no motivation wasn’t there because there was nothing they would get such as transport allowance to go to training,” she says.
She believes that if the mindset of some Africans can change towards the sport, there may be new investors that would contribute to making the sport reach new heights.
The former Tanzania coach stresses the importance of proper infrastructure on the continent in order to grow the game and to motivate the next generation of players to take up the sport, even though it’s not yet professionalised in the continent as yet.
“South Africa had been coming to Malawi and we played in outdoor courts. You can see now that netball has changed completely, because we are now playing indoors. It’s only benefiting those countries that have resources and have got infrastructure. We don’t have that infrastructure. Since I started participating in the Netball World Championships in 1995, we are only getting an indoor facility this year. We thought before the World Cup, we would have seen the likes of New Zealand or Australia coming to Malawi to play a series of games before we come to this side, we thought the indoor (arena) would be finished now but it isn’t,” she says.
Waya is hopeful that home ground advantage will count in favour of the African team to cause a few upsets and have a better finish in the standings come 6 August. In the 2019 edition, Malawi, Uganda, and Zimbabwe finished sixth, seventh, and eighth position while the Proteas achieved a fourth place spot.
“African teams will perform well but I think they didn’t have enough time to play preparation friendlies or didn’t have enough time in camp ahead of the competition. For South Africa, it’s easier because some of the players are based outside and are professional players. For them to come together to show the world that they can do it is easy. I think Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Uganda will compete but they will try their level best to maintain their numbers,” she says.