NETBALL Tasmania has sat down to meet Collingwood Football Club for the first time to discuss plans for its planned netball side in 2017.
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The impromptu talks were a side issue to Netball Australia’s state member organisations gathering in Melbourne to run through initial contract paperwork for the new national league.
“It’s very much watch this space because we’re next into the final leg of things – we’re are just making sure everything is on track and going in the right direction because it’s such a massive thing for Netball in Tasmania,” Netball Tasmania chief executive Julia Phillips said.
Netball Australia announced 11 days ago that it would split from Netball New Zealand to cease the ANZ Championship after nine years and form a revised Australian competition with three new teams.
AFL club Collingwood were announced as a preferred bidder with new partner Netball Tasmania.
“We have a partnership with a team that has a tremendous history and profile in Australian sport,” she said.
Phillips also believes the relationship with the cashed-up AFL heavyweights will benefit Tasmanian netball financially in the long-term.
“There was a number of things that were identified in our high-performance plan that we would have struggled to support, but were in the plan anyway,” she said.
“There were also other things that we would have loved to have done, but there was just no way we had the resources to do it – well now we can revisit that plan.”