The Collingwood Magpies' future in Super Netball is in doubt, with the club announcing it is in the process of reviewing its licence for 2024.
The Pies have won just two games in nine rounds so far this season and dwindling crowd numbers have become a real financial issue as the club's netball program has struggled to stay afloat.
Since its beginning in 2017, the franchise has failed to reach its potential and attract a loyal following despite signing some of the biggest stars and sharpest minds available in the sport.
Fronting the media on Wednesday, Netball Australia's chief executive Kelly Ryan confirmed that even if Collingwood was unable to participate next season there would still be eight teams competing for the trophy, as per the current broadcast agreement.
So how did Collingwood get it so wrong and who else is keen on launching a Super Netball team?
The richest AFL club
The Collingwood Magpies brand is one of the most valuable assets in Australian sport and it is considered to be the biggest powerhouse in the AFL.
Last November, the club announced its 2022 financial results with a net profit of $7,134,753.
In February, The Age reported that Collingwood would only receive the base distribution of funding from the AFL in 2023 (between $10.5 million and $11 million) for a second-straight year, alongside Richmond, West Coast and Hawthorn.
The football league offers variable funding to its 18 teams to try to balance out the competition. Every club receives the same base distribution before some are topped up, depending on their needs.
Knowing this, it feels a bit rich that the Pies have reportedly approached Netball Australia for financial assistance considering the governing body's well-documented debt and money woes.
Netball Australia is expected to be $300,000 in the clear this year, but it still owes $4 million in loans that have been extended to 2025, so it's not quite out of the woods yet.
Insiders estimate it costs roughly $3 million to run a Super Netball club per season — less than half of Collingwood's 2022 profits. However, those in the know say netball is at the bottom of Collingwood's priority list, which runs in the order of AFL, VFL, AFLW, VFLW and then Super Netball.
The side certainly doesn't have money flowing in from ticket sales, as it's failed to fill John Cain Arena at every one of its home games except for the Melbourne derby.
They were only able to attract 1,505 people in their opening game against the NSW Swifts in round one and have watched the numbers continue to drop as the weeks have gone on.
The contrasting success of the Vixens
Sue Crow was recently appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her significant service to sports administration. During her career, she has worked in cricket, softball, AFL, football and netball.
Crow was the Netball Victoria and Melbourne Vixens chief executive during the founding years of the now-successful Super Netball club (from February 2007 to November 2009), and her first year on the job coincided with the final season of the 1997-2007 national netball league.
By the time Crow was appointed, it had already been announced that the Kestrels and Phoenix would need to merge at the end of the season to form one Victorian side for the trans-Tasman Championship — and this happened in other areas of the country too — to allow space for five New Zealand teams to link up with five Australian teams.
The turnaround from one era to the next was quick and there was a lot that had to be done in eight months, from the grand final in August to the first round of the new competition in April.
A team name and colours had to be picked, players re-trialled for selection, existing coaches were interviewed alongside new faces, the Victorian Netball League was established as a feeder competition, and most importantly a new team culture needed to be built.
Key sponsorship came from the Victorian Institute of Sport, giving the athletes access to greater facilities and high-performance environments, while their games were largely scheduled at the then State Netball and Hockey Centre (now known as Melbourne Sports Centres) to focus on securing a better atmosphere among smaller crowds.
Once all of that was in place, Crow remembers taking a step back.
"I took a little bit of a back seat when it came to the day-to-day operations with the team, in that I allowed the coach and her staff to run the side," Crow told the ABC.
"I believe in that separation between administration and high performance so, although I oversaw the program, budgets and whatever else, the coach and team were able to establish their own way of doing things … I wasn't down in the rooms before a game or anything like that.
"Sharelle McMahon and Bianca Chatfield took a real lead in the beginning, in terms of what they felt the ideals, value and culture of the team needed to be."
Collingwood first showed their interest in the sport around this time and forged an ongoing partnership with the Vixens, not unlike many of the football and netball partnerships held between clubs in other states, offering guidance, further training facilities and ticket deals.
Why the Pies have therefore been unable to implement the strategies and effective netball administration they'd already been exposed to while linked to the Vixens remains a real mystery.
"We got great support from them in several areas," Crow said.
"We had two or three of their people on our advisory committee, we outsourced our membership services at one stage because we weren't able to manage it in-house, they were open to us using facilities, and we leant on their expertise … There were several joint initiatives between our clubs.
"Even back then, Eddie McGuire was keen on having a Collingwood-branded team so it may be that people have changed, particularly in leadership roles — president, chief executive, board — so the ones that were passionate about netball have left and the present people have a different view."
Perhaps their downfall was promoting the Vixens to their fan base in the first place.
"Most of the football fans that were also netball fans would have started following the Vixens then, and I don't know as a fan whether you change over if your football team gets their own team," Crow said.
"The problem is Collingwood is such a strong brand that people either love them or hate them, so whilst they've got a huge supporter base, there would also be a lot of people that wouldn't support them because they just don't like Collingwood.
"It's a long-established tribalism in Victoria and that was something our board debated about regarding the work we were doing with them — are we alienating some fans?"
What other teams could we see enter the league?
Both Netball Tasmania and rugby league club the Gold Coast Titans have publicly expressed their interest in joining Super Netball in recent years.
The Titans launched a netball team in 2021 that plays in Queensland's Sapphire Series and has attracted some great talent to their coaching and playing roster, such as former Silver Ferns legends Temepara Bailey and Cat Tuivaiti.
However, they also recently launched a NRLW side, and their facilities are already stretched accommodating both sports, so these would need further development if they were to commit to the elite netball space. At this stage, it feels unlikely they would be ready to go by 2024.
Tasmania, on the other hand, has an existing partnership with the Collingwood Magpies.
Last December, the state secured a $1.23 million agreement with the club to see them play one pre-season game and one regular-season game in Tasmania each year for the next three years.
Any time the Pies play at the Silverdome in Launceston they manage to attract a decent crowd, and the state's pathway team that participates at the Australian Netball Championships (a level below Super Netball, previously known as ANL) used to be called the Tasmanian Magpies.
A joint venture between the Collingwood Football Club and Netball Tasmania, therefore, seems like a solid idea — the state gets a team, and the Magpies can continue in the league.
But there are still plenty of questions about how this would work: Would the set-up need to move to Hobart, are the current group of players prepared to move, would Tasmania want its own fresh, homegrown team, and does the state government have the funding to back one after recently establishing the Jack Jumpers in the NBL and securing an AFL licence for 2028.
If there is to be a new team, they likely needed to spring into action yesterday to get up and running in time. Time is ticking as player signings for 2024 are due to happen in the next few months.
Crow says major investment will be required in the very beginning, and netball may need to re-think its governance structure to help them get on their feet.
Collingwood is one of the only clubs in the Super Netball league not linked to a state netball association and perhaps that's been one of the reasons it's struggled to grab hold of a decent netball crowd.
"You need major investment and early success helps, certainly within the first four or so years.
"In terms of culture, thinking about the types of players you sign to the team, will they work together? Bringing in a whole lot of stars that don't get on is not going to cut it.
"The governance structure is important too — are the state associations holding back netball?
"If they're a private club, do they need more support from the state body? And if the state body is running its own team, how does that work?
"Women's sport is so competitive now across the codes, for netball to grow as a whole it needs to make sure it isn't caught up in its own little world of state federations versus national federations."
