News

Over the past month we have been advised by ANA they want to change the season dates for the Saturday Junior netball competition.

Proposed changes:
- Summer 2026/2027 will commence on 18 July 2026 with the Grand Final being played on 20 March 2027. (Future Summer season will commence in Oct each year to March following year - see below)
- The Summer 2026/2027 season will consist of 24 rounds of games
- First three rounds being Grading Rounds - no points will be carried over to the full season.
Teams/Games will still continue to be monitored.
- The Competition will be a further 21 rounds of fixtured matches followed by two rounds of finals
- The only Age Group to change will be 18&U (to allow those players aging out from Junior competition the ability to play one last season at ANA before heading to Seniors).
- Player age eligibility will be cut off as per the day after Grand Final (21 March 27)
- Players will be able to play the full season at ANA using 2026 VNA membership (It will continue to be valid until the Grand Final of the season is completed) - ie: 21 March 2027
- NV open purchasing of VNA for the following year early October so players can purchase then or leave it until March each year - they will still get a full year of coverage either way.
- The Junior Mixed and Senior Night competitions will remain within the calendar year (Seasons - Autumn & Spring) - this also minimises extra workload on the club volunteers!
- Entries for Summer 2026/2027 will be due on 20th June 2026.

Season dates will then continue after the Summer 2026/2027 as follows:
- Saturday Juniors - Winter Season - April to Sept each year
- Saturday Juniors - Summer Season - Oct to March each year
- Junior Mixed and Seniors - Autumn - Jan to June each year
- Junior Mixed and Seniors - Spring - July to Dec each year

ANA have put forward the reason for the change is to reduce the workload on administrators and registrar of ANA over the December period each year. Apparently they do not get a break from when netball finishes around second week of Dec until it returns late Jan.
Currently our teams are submitted in late Nov, teams are graded by ANA in Dec (when the competition is still running or just finished) and Summer competition is set up to start in January. ANA are complaining their staff do not get a break over this time despite there being no competition running until late Jan.

*More information from ANA following the our clubs initial email and those of the other clubs can be found attached.

What this means for our Club and players:
- Saturday season dates now straddle a calendar year instead of being within a calendar year
- Players will be completing a school year whilst the netball season continues in the following year. This is an additional challenge for grading as players may switch schools from one year to next. Can they still train at same time. Will the coach still be available? Will they still be able to play in the new school year?
- A break of 8-9 weeks in the middle of the season due to summer holidays is not ideal when trying to keep players engaged in sport.
- Family plans change from one year to the next - players now need to commit to playing netball in September and see through the team until the following March.
- Team Selection day will need to be held in Feb (as soon as school goes back) instead of October. We only hold one team selection day each year to cover both seasons.
- Burden on committee to grade and submit teams to ANA - has to be done in less than 4 weeks (late Jan when back to mid Feb when entries are due) or we start planning for this in Nov (when the season has only just begun!) This doesn't give our club administrators a break!
- Teams entries will need to be submitted to ANA in early March and early Sept each year instead of early June and late Nov.
- ANA will now only have two weeks between each season finishing and starting however they believe they can get the grading done and season set up in this time! However they struggle now with the 6 weeks at the end of the year to get this done?

What are the options for the Club?

ANA did not consult with any of the clubs before making the change to season dates. We all received the change via an email.

The Club submitted in wiring our objection to the change of season dates to ANA, along with several other Saturday junior clubs. ANA took some of our feedback on board. Initially they wanted to run a "mini season" from July 2026 to Sept 2026 and then kick off a full season in Oct 26 to Mar 27. Which meant two lots of fees, team selections, team entries - lots of work for our club. This was rejected by the clubs and hence the new longer season was created as above for Summer 2026/27. This in not ideal either.

ANA failed to address our other concerns around the change to season dates. The concerns we have are:
- burden on committee to select teams and submit team entry forms in January each year when we are just returning from a break
- players will now age out of U17 earlier as the Winter season finishes in Sept rather than Dec each year. It's so hard to keep players that age engaged in sport so having an early finish is not helpful
- end of season celebrations will now need to be held in March and Sept each year. Currently we have our end of year function in November which celebrates the year of netball and is our major fundraiser. We will no longer be able to hold this annual event. Holding in March and Sept will have its own challenges with Easter and AFL/local footy finals.

Clubs over the past few seasons have respectively asked ANA about their admin processes around fixtures, grading, registrar duties and live scoring on the Netball Connect App which other associations use. The response from ANA is always they prefer the paper versions so teams can't cheat and they want to check scores and players names each week. Their refusal to adopt technology is frustrating. We also don't know who is responsible for the score entries each week and some weeks results aren't entered on a timely basis as they haven't had the time. All we are told is the registrar is one of the committee members. Interesting to note by their own admission the burden on the committee each season is growing yet they don't want to hire an admin assistant to help as many clubs have respectfully suggested. Just frustrating for us all!

Next Steps
A special meeting of members is being held on Mon April 20 where Club delegates can speak for 5 minutes on the proposed changes. At the end the Club delegates can vote on the resolution proposed by members that season dates remain as they are and By laws be updated to reflect this. However, by laws can also be changed by the committee at it's next meeting and we feel this is what may actually happen. ANA committee have the power to force through the change to season dates despite the concerns of the clubs and players. All because the admin burden is too much for the committee and they don't want to employ an admin assistant to help.

Once the issue on season dates is finalised, which we hope will be by the end of April, we will start preparations for the next season - what ever those dates may be.

If you have any comments please contact Narelle Shirley on 0418 530 382 or via email president@willitigers.com.au

Go Tigers!
🏐💛💙🐯