Netball 101

The history of sport in New Zealand, isn’t all black and white. In this episode of The Amp, we put netball front and centre; tracing its journey from makeshift hoops to packed arenas. We chat with players, historians, and experts to settle the score on over a hundred years of netball in Aotearoa, and what makes it so much more than just a game.

Episode Transcript

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Gabriel Tongaawhikau 0:02This podcast is brought to you by Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.

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Laura Skerritt 0:10It's a cold Wednesday night. You're pulling on a bib with your position stitched in bold across the front center, goal, attack, wing defense, warming up, getting ready for the starting whistle, sussing out the competition. This is a pretty familiar ritual here in Aotearoa, whether it's school or with mates after work. It's a ritual as ingrained as pavlova at Christmas. Netball is a given in New Zealand, most of us have probably seen the game, if not played it ourselves. So how did we get here, and what can netball tell us about who we are as a nation?
Kia ora. I'm Laura Skerritt, your host for this episode of the amp, the podcast from Auckland Museum that amplifies the incredible stories from our collections, our mahi and our place in the Pacific. In this episode, we trace the rise of netball in Aotearoa from school playgrounds to World Cup stadiums, and explore how the game became a space for strength, sisterhood and social change. But how do you start a 100 year national phenomenon? To figure that out, let's get a picture of what life was like for women when it all began, from the Museum Social History Curator Jane Groufsky
Jane Groufsky 1:34For women and girls in the late 19th century and the early 20th century. For example, school was compulsory from 1877 on, and that was due to the Education Act of 1877 which made it mandatory for Pakeha children to attend some form of school. And then later in 1894 that became compulsory for Māori as well. So by the early 20th century, children generally had some level of education, though secondary school attendance for girls didn't really become common and to well into the 20th century. And then in terms of jobs, women and paid employment was the exception, rather than the rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So for example, in 1891 less than a quarter of the workforce was women, and there were certain industries like education that had a majority female workforce. So you know, most teachers were women, but then almost all of them would leave their jobs once they got married, and it just meant that middle class women were instead, very active in charity work, so usually through their church or through temperance groups like The WCTU, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and that was really seen as something that you could do alongside, you know, your main job of being a wife and a mother as a way to give back to and to improve society. But obviously, lots of women had this kind of ambition and interest and want to really contribute to society beyond that, and that's why they found themselves very active in these kinds of unpaid roles, nurturing your family and community didn't leave a lot of time to go against the grain and be a trailblazing woman in sport. Sports for women, looked very different in the 19th century. It wasn't about competition, it was about polite recreation. Think about the main depiction of women in a period drama, taking a turn about the room, playing the piano, quietly reading or doing needlework, women might swim, ride horses or take part in gentle games like croquet, but nothing was formal and certainly nothing was strenuous. One influential voice was Dr Edward Clark in 1874 he wrote a book claiming that women needed to slow down physically when studying, especially during their periods. His ideas, framed as science, were used to discourage women from doing sport for many years. But reality told another story. Women were already showing that they could be both strong and intelligent. Still old beliefs meant that competitive sport was largely off limits, and a lot of women missed out on the teamwork skills and confidence it could bring. That was about to change, though, a new game was on the horizon, one that would put women on the court, give them a ball and let them compete for the very first time,
I think for women at the start of netball, you know, and its inception, it was, it was quite liberating for women to develop a game of their own, to not be competing with boys, or to be doing something was seen as a lesser version of the sport. And there was also that, that opportunity for social connection, and the fact that it was fairly accessible as an activity. It didn't need lots of equipment, and you just need the ball and a couple of hoops.
Laura Skerritt 4:40If you've ever looked at a basketball hoop and thought, hang on, that's not much of a basket, you'd be right. But when the game first began back in 1891 the name made perfect sense, because players were literally thrown. Balls into baskets, classroom waste paper baskets, to be precise. And every time a point was scored, the game was stopped, a ladder pulled out and the ball retrieved. Now maybe you've got older relatives who sometimes say basketball when they mean netball. They're not actually getting it wrong. Well, sort of the reason that when they're showing you those grainy photos of their school basketball team, they're wearing gym tunics and not Air Jordans. Is because, up until 1970 netball was known as basketball, the game netball that we play today traces its origins to the United States, where school teacher James Naismith first slam dunked a ball into a basket. Well, maybe the slam dunk came later, but the sport did start out as basketball in 1891 at the YMCA college for young men.
Dr Margaret Henley 5:50It all evolved from one game, which was basketball. James Naismith was looking for a game that would would keep his young men fit and not injured in the off season of American football. And so it was a game to, you know, get that high fitness up, have the ball skills, but not risk the same level of injury. And it was a pretty fast flowing game, bouncing, bouncing ball and women's soil game being played, obviously, YWCA and YMCA are very closely linked. And so some women came from women's colleges, saw it being played, and thought, this would be ideal for for our girls.
Laura Skerritt 6:30That's netball historian, Dr Margaret Henley.
Dr Margaret Henley 6:33There were some English women there on the sideline, and they thought, oh, this will be good to take back to England. And so they said, how do you sort of organize it? And they said, Oh, we sort of have three areas, you know, you have your attackers, your defenders, and your centers. And by the time it got through to England, they thought that that meant that you had three thirds, and they were absolute, so nobody could cross those thirds. And then they thought, well, we can't have the women dying of apoplexy from running round too much.
Laura Skerritt 7:02So in the late 19th century, women in England began playing a version of basketball modified to align with social expectations of the time, no dribbling, minimal running, and certainly no physical contact. For a long time, it was a commonly held belief that a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend JC Jameson was the first to bring basketball to New Zealand in 1906 but hold up, that's not the whole story. In fact, this tale starts a few years earlier, and with a woman. Her name was Jessie Knapp. Jessie's talent shone from a young age, earning her scholarships that led to Nelson college for girls there, under the wing of trailblazer Kate Edger, New Zealand's first woman with a university degree, Jessie thrived. She tackled subjects from languages to mathematics, history to mental science, and by 1891 she'd earned her Bachelor of Arts. As our curator Jane Groufsky said earlier, teaching was one of the few careers open to women at the time, but Jessie used it as a launch pad. She began in primary schools in Nelson and Palmerston North before moving to the Girls College in Whanganui in 1898 and that's where she introduced her students to something new, basketball. The first mention of her efforts comes in the school's 1898 annual report, a good eight years before the Reverend Jameson was thought to have seen the first coin tossed on the game. The weather had been against them, it said. But the next year, there was a shift in tone...
Voice actor 8:36Basketball, which went through a somewhat sickly infancy last year developed into quite a lusty youth under the good nursing of Miss Knapp.
Laura Skerritt 8:48So how did a teacher in Whanganui learn about a woman's version of basketball when the original game had only just been invented in the United States? Well, by the late 1890s women's newspaper columns were already buzzing about this new game for girls. They called it football played with the hands and some even printed rule books and simple court diagrams. It was sweeping the United States, and already part of teacher training in England. Jessie was exactly the kind of woman to season an idea like this sporty well read and willing to give her students something fresh and exciting. And from these early games in her school yard, basketball and later netball started to take root in New Zealand,
Dr Margaret Henley 9:32It was played on spaces that were not required for male sport. That's why it ended up where it was, if you think about it, that it used to be on playing fields, but that's required by men and boys during winter for rugby and whatever else they needed pieces of dirt for. So they slowly got moved and squashed off there. And so the only place that males do not require for their sporting endeavors is. Is the tennis court in winter, and you just repaint the lines. And so that became space that the net pool increasingly went into, because it was unwanted space for male sport. And of course, girls schools had hugely less land and acreage than male sports had. And from when they were built when they were purchased, it was because girls were assumed not to need to run around so much.
Laura Skerritt 10:26Despite societal expectations, these women were using their resourcefulness and determination to literally take up space and pursue their passions. This kind of make do attitude saw the game evolve differently as each community saw fit.
Dr Margaret Henley 10:42So in New Zealand, we started playing we was playing seven aside, and the private girls schools were playing seven aside, but we were playing mainly nine aside, because that was the way that all girls could get a go, because they had such restricted number of courts that they could play on, because that's only two tennis courts, that was all they could manage. And so they do nine of cycles that got 18 girls through in a game, instead of 14 girls through in the game. And so it was very much to do with meeting local conditions, local needs, and just adapting and evolving.
Speaker 1 11:17With local centres, adapting the game for their regions. The Sport quickly garnered a following of loyal players. While they could anyway,
Dr Margaret Henley 11:24They loved it. They were obsessed by it. And of course, women, adult women, had a very small window within which they could play. They played through primary and secondary school. But then, you know, the average girl left school at 15 that you know, maybe some made it to 16. Brainy ones made it to 16. Some left at 1314, so. But if they left at 1516, as the average, and then they were out in the workforce, and then they married round about 1920, 21 years of age, that's the only time they had of being independent young women, and that's when they played their game. Because the moment you were married, you didn't play anymore, because A. that would be selfish and B. that would take out all of your energies, which should be going into supporting your husband and servicing the needs of your children. So they all stopped playing soon. So in marriage, those were the rules. Those were the unspoken expectations of society.
Laura Skerritt 12:28Even those still allowed to play weren't exempt from the pressures of polite society, though already confined to a third of the court, there couldn't be room for anyone to play too boldly.
Dr Margaret Henley 12:40We can't have women hogging the ball, which you can do in basketball, because women are not there to be stars. They're there to foster esprit de corps, right? So that you are a team, and you only play as a team, and the team can only win, because the team worked together to win, and they also wanted to get more play in the center. If you think about it, basketball like the middle of the court is corridor for basketball, because it's all the starry stuff just around the headboard, sitting around the hoops at each end, that's where all the magic is. But netball, there's a lot of game in the center of court. Huge amount of game in how you get the ball through the court. So it slowed down the game. And by having those three thirds, and we developed our Niner side game, and they were limited to their thirds, so that slowed the game a bit more as well. And originally, they could actually hit it from one end down to the other and cut out the center third. And so they went, and that means all the girls in the middle won't get to touch the ball. We can't have that. And it's also an unladylike doing big heave ho. So they stopped that. And so you had to play in each of the thirds.
Laura Skerritt 13:55But limiting the amount of cross court lobbing had an unintended outcome, far from making the game gentler and safer for the delicate wee ladies giving it a go, these rules entrenched a strategy and speed that separates netball from other team sports today. By the 1920s a strong community had evolved around netball, and there was a growing feeling that to take the game further, the netballers of Aotearoa had to band together. Netball had spread across the nation, but one town's netball could look pretty different to the games played a town over there was a clear need for a national body to set the rules once and for all.
Dr Margaret Henley 14:34So the women who were running the game in growing provincial areas, you know, particularly in Auckland and Wellington in Christchurch, and Dunedin and Invercargill was strong too, and they said, We've got to pull together, and we've got to get this game so we're all codified, and we're playing same games so that we can play each other, and we can't have a national tournament, because everybody. Is playing a different game, so we need to decide on what we're going to do, and the only way we can do that is to form an association. So that's what they pulled together and did in 1924 which made us the first netball playing nation in the world to form an association.
Laura Skerritt 15:16The sport was formalized under the New Zealand Basketball Association, a name it would keep for nearly half a century.

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Dr Margaret Henley 15:22The formation of the association in 1924 that was a five sided, bold move, and it was also a move to make the sport the national sport. They were hell bent on making it the national sport because hockey had been the national sport for women up till then, but of course, that competed with male needs, recreational needs. So by 1927 it was the national sport. It was the one that really all young women played.
Laura Skerritt 15:51From city courts to remote rural schools. Netball became a staple of community life. It was a game that didn't need much, a ball, a court, some chalk lines and a lot of enthusiasm. So by the mid 1920s we'd nationalized the game. But what about internationally?
Dr Margaret Henley 16:11When we played Australia for the first time ever in 1938 which was to try and get some international competition, we had to play a seven a side game, when we only played a nine a side game, when we went over there and we got beaten horribly because it was it was very different. They played on grass courts more because they had more room than we did, because we were used to playing on asphalt courts and nine aside, it was a very strategically different game. And then our lot didn't want to change, and Australia weren't going to change for anyone. And so we didn't change until 1959 so so it was a long time before we actually went across to the seventh side game.
Jane Groufsky 16:55The Commonwealth has always been a strong center for netball, and that rivalry between New Zealand and Australia goes back to the very start. You know, the first, our first international tournament, was against Australia, and so that rivalry has actually just been there from the very beginning and right the way through.
Laura Skerritt 17:14When women started playing that ball socially. The aim was to encourage them to be physically active. But it became so much more than that.
Dr Margaret Henley 17:21We had the first wave of feminism, which was obviously the suffragists, and you know all about, all about the vote and education and health and employment for women. And so that early push came through. So in the 1920s this group of women who brought in these changes and started to build and push from there, they're what I call the silent feminists. And these were middle class women, usually educated, middle class women who started to be hugely involved in organizations out of the home, so they still were married, raised their families, and did all of that, but they had a pretty good, workable knowledge and position within society and and, you know, sometimes entrepreneurial, their husbands were, you know, often quite entrepreneurial. So they understood about those things, and they started to go into all of these associations and started to make change, and they they fervently believed that through sport and all of the benefits that sport bring for women, which is about health, about well being, about Friendship, about loyalty and about supporting one another enriched women's lives, and it also meant that their lives were going to be different from that of their mothers and their grandmothers. And so they wanted to bring about change and progress in women's lives, so each generation of young New Zealand women coming through were going to have better quality of life, better chance of education, better chance of of recreation, which is what netball basketball was able to give them. So they're a fundamentally really important group of women who sort of laid that foundation. And they were tireless. It was all a huge volunteer army, basically,
Laura Skerritt 19:21As the game evolved to reflect changing attitudes towards women's physicality, so did the players uniforms, fashions, which may appear dated and constrictive to a modern eye, but integral to this wider process of liberation.
Jane Groufsky 19:35Well, when we look at the uniforms, I think it really reflects how the game itself has changed and grown, because, in its inception, the intention was to have the sport for women that allowed them to essentially maintain their decorum, and so you didn't have to hunch over like you did with hockey, and you didn't have to you'd stopped past the ball, you not get too sweaty and then, but obviously, you know, get the players themselves on the court and they want to play, and they want to exceed instead. Push it to become this very fast paced and physical game that it is today, and that's why the clothing has evolved to allow for that.
Laura Skerritt 20:07In the early days, players had to dress modestly. Picture long, heavy skirts with woolen box tunics that reach well below your knees, wool stockings, bustles and button up shoes.
Jane Groufsky 20:21Uniforms today. I mean, all sports uniforms, more or less, are made of synthetic technical fabrics, and that'll be made to be lightweight and to be fixable and comfortable. And then when you look at the early 20th century, I mean, this was before the widespread development of synthetic fibers, so it was cotton and wool and things like that that really featured heavily. So if you look at the first national team in 1938 when we were touring Australia. They've got this pose team photo, and they're all wearing a black woolen tunic over a long sleeved white cotton shirt, and they've got a tie done up. And you look at the photo, and you think, oh, that's their formal uniform. And they'll take off the tie and roll up their sleeves to play, but when they get on the court, but no, that was the full playing uniform. And today, you know, we look at that, we think, Oh, it looks very constrictive and quite over the top. But actually, that gym tunic at the time, it was a very freeing garment, because it allowed for a wide range of mobility, and it could fit any shape of woman, any size of woman. And it really, it stayed the uniform in professional and in school domestic netball for much of the 20th century, a lot of our mums will probably remember that ubiquitous Jim tunic. But then by the 1970s there was a two piece style of uniform that started to become more common, and that was when you had the polo shirt and the pleated wrap skirt that was held on by Velcro. Though that was a bit risky. In the 1979 World Cup Silver Ferns, Captain Lynn Parker actually had her skirt ripped off during the game, so it was a bit of a hazard. And then finally, in 1999 that's when you get the Silver Ferns switching to the iconic sleeveless polyester black dress. And that's more or less been the style for the past 26 years for the team, and it just gets periodically updated.
Laura Skerritt 22:01What players wear today is a further evolution of that, all in one get up, but made with breathable and durable fabrics, often with moisture wicking properties to help players stay cool and dry. Plus you could just biff it in the washing machine and not have to worry about cleaning your heavy woolen tunic. One less chore? Score.
Off the international stage, netball is just as popular on local courts. Here in New Zealand, children can start playing netball from the age of five right up until they leave school, and it's consistently the most popular sport played young people across the country are learning about teamwork, communication and perseverance. It's a game that teaches so much more than just throwing and catching. It's about developing friendships that last a lifetime, about learning to trust your teammates, and about the thrill of a hard fought win. We caught up with junior netball team the lightning from Kaurilands primary school to find out what they love about their game.
The Lightning team 23:07Hi, my name's Tilly, and my favorite thing about netball is shooting. My name's Kaya, and I like netball because there's a lot of action in it. My name's Daniel. My favorite thing is, when you get, like, a intercept, and they're just like, how did you get that?
My name is Edie, and netball is not just for little girls, it's for all ages and all genders. Anyone can play it. It's insanely fun
Laura Skerritt 23:36Once you leave school. Social netball is there to fill the gap with 1000s of players up and down the country joining teams and competing in community leagues.
Annabel Walker 23:45Hi, my name is Annabel Walker, and I'm in an indoor netball team called howdy hoops and an outdoor netball team called shoot happens. It was to meet new people, and I really enjoyed playing in high school, and when I moved in with my flatmate, we were both really interested in meeting new people and just doing something together, and we thought we could really and all our other friends to play in a team together. And that worked really well, because now I'm in two different teams, and they're both quite different, but I like that, because I'm meeting new people every week since I played it my whole life during school, and then had a big break in between uni and work now doing it socially this year, I just like, remember why I love it so much.
Laura Skerritt 24:38Netball is one of the most inclusive sports out there, whether you're indoors or outdoors, young or old, competitive or just in it for the laughs, there's a place for you on the court you'll find women's teams, men's teams, mixed teams, social clubs, leagues, walking netball and as of 2025 no limits netball created to bring disabled players off the sidelines and onto the court. Last year, in partnership with Netball New Zealand Auckland Museum celebrated the sports centenary with the exhibition our game, a century of netball in Aotearoa, New Zealand, one year on, we're taking the opportunity to keep the story going.
Nick Yeats 25:17So we have a rugby Museum, a cricket Museum, often sort of smaller affairs, but also without really having a, you know, netball specific museum or a National Sports Museum, like they do in Australia, based out of the MCG in Melbourne, there was quite a need to start about 100 years by actually showing off some of that collection somewhere. So it was nice for us to be a venue to tell that story for a kind of, I would say, an important gap in the sporting history of New Zealand. My name is Nick Yeats, and I'm a senior interpretive planner at Auckland Museum.
Laura Skerritt 25:50Nick's role is to work through the different ways that we can tell a story of an exhibition to our visitors,
Nick Yeats 25:56Whether that's in labels or videos or digital experiences. Yeah, to really menarche the visitor and take them on that journey, so that way they can, you know, connect to the information that we tell. Because historically, museums, you know, have been, at times, quite academic and intellectual. And the idea is we want to remove some of those barriers, to create accessibility to all the great stuff that we have and the stories that we want to tell,
Laura Skerritt 26:20From grassroots to the global stage, this exhibition shared lesser known stories from the people who have shaped and supported netball and Aotearoa, from the all important bib washers to our Global Champions, the Silver Ferns.

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Jane Groufsky 26:33One of the unique aspects in designing this exhibition was that netball New Zealand came to us and they already had this rich archive of objects and documents that they could use to tell their story. So it was a bit of back and forth between figuring out what the main narrative was going to be and choosing objects to fit these stories, but then also being guided by what was in their collection, and then how that would shape the story that we told. And then, of course, netball New Zealand, they're, you know, they're so tapped into the wider community, and so where there was something that we knew was important to include, and we didn't have any material for that, they would know the people of the organizations to contact regarding loans. So, for example, we were able to loan a whistle that was given to the first Silver Ferns coach Myrtle Muir, we learned that from her family, and that was a really special object to include.
Laura Skerritt 27:20Nick and Jane were part of the Museum team, on the Netball New Zealand side were Dr Margaret Henley, statistician and all round super fan, Todd Miller and a team of netball experts who could give the full picture. Now, when you're trying to create an exhibition that tells the story of a century of our most played sport, it can feel a bit like there's a teeny bit of pressure to get it right. So how do you get started on something like this?
Nick Yeats 27:46The early days of exhibition development are all creative ideation and what we call the concept phase. But for me, in layman's terms, I think it's very, very based on vibes. It's a whole bunch of discussions between experts like Margaret and Todd and Jane being our curator and expert here as well. And myself and together, we kind of think about the really high level story of what we're trying to tell. We think of the key, what we call learning outcomes of we want them, want things for people to take away, and key messages that we want to sort of put in the show. We break it down into sections, and then from there, then that's when we can really use that narrative structure to break down the object list and all the other stuff that we're going to do. So it always starts with the big ideas. Kind of stuff this show was, I would say, particularly object led, because obviously that's kind of the rationale for the show in the first place. And to some extent, to celebrate the centenary with these wonderful objects that were acquired by netball New Zealand.
Laura Skerritt 28:42The collection included rule books, uniforms, scrapbooks, whistles, trophies, bibs, shields and hundreds of photos spanning decades.
Nick Yeats 28:52When going through the 100 Years of photos, there were actually quite a few from around 1910 which showed netball being played in the domain not far from where we work, here at Tāmaki Paenga Hira, and seeing the outfits and the full woolen dresses and that kind of thing, and the pulley basket system to get the ball down was very entertaining and very interesting and fascinating to see that over 100 years ago, being played so in terms of the pulley with the basket, I think that was one of the more entertaining things I discovered that was because, as opposed to putting a hole in the basket, they wanted to use a basket, you know, for their homework and and so they'll take it, you know, to netball practice, and then back again. So the only way to get the ball out was to have a little pulley system with a rope to get the ball out of the basket. Then eventually they would have designated baskets where they cut the hole, and then it gets closer and closer to the Netball basket. We know today.
Laura Skerritt 29:41There's something quite moving about that historical connection to the land we're on today,
Jane Groufsky 29:48Looking at the place of sport in museums. I mean, it may seem like a bit of a mismatch, given that sport is very active and the museum can be perceived as quite sort of static, but we look to tell stories that connect with our audience. And sport is something that so many people have experience with as a player, as a supporter or a watcher, and it's also just an opportunity to surface the stories behind the sport and to really acknowledge the people who made it what it is today. So that's not just the players, but it's the organizers, the coaches, the administrators, the unsung heroes of the sport.
Laura Skerritt 30:19What began as a game for girls played in borrowed spaces, has grown into one of our most loved sports. Netball's history is one of perseverance, friendship and resourcefulness shaped by restrictive conditions that paradoxically made it an accessible and inclusive game. Over 101 years, it has expanded far beyond the court, a source of national pride, a stage for some of our most beloved athletes, and a sport enjoyed worldwide. Today, every child has the opportunity to get onto the court, to play, to connect and to carry the game forward. Who knows what the next century will hold. But just as generations before have pivoted, adapted and invested in the game. The future of netball is safe in the hands of those who will shape the next 101 years.
The Lightning team 31:09I like netball because your teammates have your back. You can really bond with a lot of kids. I found my best friend through it. All of us have fun together. We all just all became friends. I love it when I intercept the ball and get it and my team cheers me on. I would like to play netball for the rest of my life. It would be quite a lot to be the next new generation of best netball players. You
Laura Skerritt 31:49That was Netball 101 written and produced by Steph Strock and me, Laura Skerritt. Sound design by Sarah O'Brien and production support from Annabel Walker. The executive producer was Teresa Cowie from connect content, thanks to our guests, Jane Groufsky, Dr Margaret, Henley, Nick Yates and Annabel Walker. A big shout out to the Lightning Netball team from Kaurilands school, and also to Howdy Hoops and Shoot Happens social clubs for letting us come along and record at their games. Finally, thanks again to Netball New Zealand for sharing 100 years of netball's history with us to find out more about the history of netball and Aotearoa, see the links in our show notes. If you're enjoying the amp help others to find us by leaving a review or sharing this episode with your friends and whānau.