Netball Tasmania's plan to play de facto host for all seven home games of Collingwood Magpies amid the pandemic lockdown of Melbourne has been cast aside in favour of more Queensland hubs.
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The model that has been favoured by the AFL has been adopted by Netball Australia over the weekend for next month's opening to the late Super Netball season.
With every round unable to avoid weekly trips to two of the competiton's eight sides including Melbourne Vixens and further away visits to two NSW host venues, Netball Australia decided to scrap its home and away schedule.
It leaves Netball Tasmania in the dark over future games despite having the most days without a COVID-19 case.
"We certainly mentioned very early in the piece to Netball Australia that we felt we would be in a position to be able to help out with their games," Netball Tasmania boss Aaron Pidgeon said.
"We weren't out of it, but we were in a better position to manage Covid than some of the states were faring.
"So for a whole range of reasons, they moved in the direction of considering a couple different spots and ended up in Queensland.
"So over the last couple of weeks our attention shifted to seeing where we sat in terms of trying to secure a game in Launceston in the back half of the fixture.
"To be honest, I still don't know where we stand.
"I actually don't know and I do need to understand that better if it is completely ruled out or not."
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The state government had been financially bankrolling Netball Tasmania to enter a fourth year of its contract to host one Collingwood home game every season worth around $300,000.
Should Netball Australia force Collingwood to skip on the Silverdome deal that extends to a preseason match in Hobart, Pidgeon would back Tasmania hosting an extra Super Netball game.
"Really it is more, I think, in terms of the games in the back of the season of what Super Netball has sort of looking to lock in around the hub fixturing," he said.
"In the event that we can't play this year, I have heard some suggestion that an alternative might be to look for two games in Launceston to even out the contract.
"If we are unable to get it this year, we'd certainly be pushing that with Netball Australia and I am sure the government would support that because they have contractual arrangements with Collingwood through us."
But Pidgeon was prepared to remain philosophical and admitted that Tasmania had little say in the matter to save the competition for this year.
"I think relocating teams independently would have been certainly hard and extremely costly," he said.
"At least with the hub, you have existing teams cutting back on so many costs.
"There is just so many considerations in play."
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