I can barely believe that, with only two home games remaining, we're almost at the end of our first season. In some ways the past three months have absolutely flown by but in other ways, it’s felt like the longest few months of my life. It’s been a real roller-coaster – from getting the team together in such a short space of time, to launching in front of a sell-out crowd and Sky Sports cameras, to developing an off-court programme to promote the sport, to watching Sirens play, and beat, some of the best teams in Britain, it’s hard to describe the emotions I’ve experienced.
As a team, we’ve been received so positively right across the board and the feedback we’ve had about how professional our whole operation is has been fantastic. Sirens are such a new team yet already, we’ve made a huge impact. We have our #ChangingTheGame and ‘Sirens For Success’ initiatives which are focused on increasing the profile of women’s sport and inspiring young girls and both have been incredibly successful.
On the court, some of the performances have been top-class and we’ve proven that we can compete with the very best teams in the league but we haven’t always had that consistency. The team are learning, however, and I am confident that we will build on this year and continue to improve.
On reflection, the season has been harder than I ever anticipated. I’ve been disappointed by the lack of support and resources available to us and we faced a lot of challenges and shut doors on our journey to this point. With zero public funding and less than 1% of sports sponsorship invested into women’s sport, it has been a tough debut season trying to finance and deliver the operation which is why I’m so grateful to the University of the West of Scotland for being our principal partner. Without their support we wouldn’t have got this team on the court. Despite the many difficulties we’ve faced along the way though, we’ve stayed focused on our mission. This project has been delivered by a tiny team of people working relentlessly but we’ve never compromised the quality of the product and of that, I’m so proud. I wanted to be the best franchise in the Superleague which was about more than just what we did on court, and we’ve achieved that. The players have been working in schools and clubs to inspire the next generation of netball players and that has been just fantastic to see.
Already, I’m looking towards next season. We’re looking to increase our sponsorship revenue to allow us to add resource to the business; we’ll have a longer pre-season with the athletes touring the country to play a series of exhibition games; we’ll strengthen the squad; and we’ll build on our #ChangingTheGame campaign to keep driving positive messaging around female sport. We’ve learnt so much in our debut season and things are only going to get better from here.
Claire Nelson is CEO of Netball Scotland
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