Last week, the Giants netball club could have been forgiven for thinking one of their staff members had broken a mirror, walked under a ladder or crossed paths with a black cat.
Heading into round two of the Super Netball season, their team was decimated by COVID-19, with six players testing positive ahead of their clash against the Adelaide Thunderbirds.
Unfortunately, it appears bad luck does come in threes, as three members of their contracted playing group were among those infected: Amy Parmenter, Jamie-Lee Price and Sophie Dwyer. The rest were Giants training partners: Jemma Donoghue, Natalie Sligar and Eliza Burton.
On top of that, the club were still waiting for two more of their contracted players, Amy Sligar and Lauren Moore, to be medically cleared to re-join the team, after being scratched from the opening round for the same reason and unable to attend training during the week.
This left the Giants with just five full-time contracted players and five uncapped training partners available to make up their game-day squad of 10 (with some being managed for injury).
And yet two appeals they made to postpone the match were denied by the Super Netball league.
Prior to the season’s start, the competition announced a new COVID-19 contingency framework that aimed to keep the season alive and provide support to impacted teams in 2022.
This included an option for clubs to request to reschedule a match if five or more of their top 10 contracted players had contracted the virus, or if three players from the one position had been infected.
Based on these guidelines, the Giants qualified on both accounts, considering Parmenter, Price, Dwyer, Amy Sligar and Moore are all part of their game-day 10, and Parmenter, Price and Sligar each occupy mid-court positions.
Once the news had been made public, a number of leading voices within the netball community expressed their concern for player welfare, the integrity of the league and the standard of its matches, if this was to be Super Netball’s stance throughout the year.
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Especially with the request to postpone the match coming so early in the competition, with plenty of time to make up the fixture mid-week and still finish the season before the Diamonds start their preparations for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
Giants captain Jo Harten tweeted that “a precedent [had] now been set for the entire season”, while former Diamond Sharni Norder told Fox Netball “it’s poor form not to have rescheduled today’s game”.
Norder was working on the sideline during the broadcast of the match at the time, watching the Giants struggle to contend with the Thunderbirds as the game went on, ultimately losing 56-43.
It must be mentioned that Amy Sligar and Moore were both eventually cleared to play, meaning the Giants only needed to replace three of their contracted athletes. Even so, they didn’t seem to be at 100 per cent capacity and lacked intensity in the contest towards the back end.
At a time where there are still studies being conducted about the long-term effects of COVID-19 on the body, the league should really be doing all that it can to ensure players recover properly.
It will also be hard to hold the league to an accountable form of consistency around these decisions, considering their decision to deny the Giants’ application seems to have largely been based on their access to a longer playing list than the rest of the other clubs.
Most Super Netball teams have between four to six training partners on top of their game-day 10 (four of these are known as nominated athletes), but the Giants signed eight for the 2022 season, to take their total playing list to 18.
This was done in goodwill, offering further opportunity to emerging players who have faced so much disruption in the NSW pathways during the last two years of the pandemic, but was then used against them when it came time to consider their application to reschedule the round 2 match.
If the league is counting this as an advantage to the Giants, then how can they make a fair comparison between their predicament and a team like the Queensland Firebirds, for instance?
The Firebirds only have 14 total players available this season and would be down to eight athletes if they were to have six of their players ruled out in the one week.
These variables make it hard to make a judgement call that is fair to both parties.
And what happens if another side is impacted leading in to a must-win match at the pointy end of the season, or finals time? Because a tough decision for the game to go ahead like the one enforced on the Giants would tick the box for consistency, but it could potentially cost a front-running team their right to contest the Super Netball crown.
In retrospect, those in charge will be satisfied the game went ahead and round 2 was wrapped up in its original time frame, but they may have created a bigger dilemma for themselves in terms of how they judge each of these requests in a fair manner moving forward.
Chelsea Pitman becomes hot property
Of course, the second biggest story to come out of round 2 revolved around the Giants’ call-up for 33-year-old Australian and English international mid-courter Chelsea Pitman.
As part of the COVID Contingency Framework, teams can register their interest to borrow another club’s nominated athlete or training partner for the week, after they’ve exhausted their own list and obtained permission from the league and the player’s relevant Super Netball club.
In a nice gesture, which will likely result in good karma for the West Coast Fever down the track, Dan Ryan gave nominated athlete Pitman the nod to don an orange dress for the Giants.
Ironically, 24 hours later, the Fever themselves had their starting wing attack, goal attack Alice Teague-Neeld ruled out with COVID-19 for the round, in a spot that Pitman would have occupied.
At that stage she’d already been promised to the Giants, and started preparations to make her debut for her fourth Australian national netball league club.
Pitman has won a gold medal at the 2011 Netball World Cup with the Diamonds and another at the 2018 Commonwealth Games with England. She most recently captained the Adelaide Thunderbirds in 2020 before she was told she would not be required for the 2021 season.
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The veteran spent last year playing in the South Australian Premier League and helping the Roses team prepare for the upcoming Commonwealth Games, before Ryan threw her a lifeline to take up a training partner contract with the Fever for 2022.
In a win-win situation, Pitman was paid a match fee (on top of her measly $5,000 contract) for taking the court with the Giants, and although they may have lost the game, the knowledge she could be seen sharing with fellow mid-courter Maddie Hay will be invaluable for her development.
So will we see this happen a lot more this season? And will a player of the calibre of Chelsea Pitman potentially play for all eight teams if COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc?
Could Pitman even play against the Fever if their opposition got stuck?
Firstly, it’s important to note that an athlete can only play in one match per round. Beyond that, the league has introduced some new guidelines.
Nominated athletes will only be able to represent up to two teams other than their own throughout the regular season. They also cannot play against their original team.
Although Chelsea Pitman is considered a training partner with the Fever, she is also one of their four nominated athletes, meaning she can play for the Giants and one more Super Netball club, other than the Fever this year. She cannot play against the Fever.
Other teams like the Giants, as mentioned above, have more than four training partners. This means four of their training partners are also classified as nominated athletes, while the other four are considered to be solely training partners.
For those that are just a training partner, no restrictions apply for how many teams they can fill in for, or their ability to play against their original team.
On top of this, there is a separate group of athletes associated with each club that are not contracted in any way. To make things confusing, these are known as nominated contingency athletes that other teams can borrow.
Another interesting element to consider, is that the borrowing team must take full responsibility of the player under their watch, so if Pitman had happened to injure herself during the match in round 2, that would leave the Giants to foot the bill for any of the related costs.
Whatever happens, the thought of seeing Chelsea Pitman back on court in the Super Netball league is one that fans are definitely excited about… and who knows where these opportunities could lead her to next year.
