Commonwealth Bank Trophy
Logo Commonwealth Bank Trophy
|
|
| Sport | Netball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1997 |
| Inaugural season | 1997 |
| Ceased | 2007 |
| No. of teams | 8 |
| Country |
 Australia
|
| Last champion(s) |
Sydney Swifts (4th title) |
| Most titles | Melbourne Phoenix (5 titles) |
| Related competitions |
ANZ Championship |
The Commonwealth Bank Trophy was the pre-eminent national netball competition in Australia from 1997 to 2007.
It was established in 1997 as a true national league to replace the ailing, state club-based Mobil League. Designed from the beginning to be more marketable to the general public, it saw large increases in crowd sizes and sponsorship over its predecessor. From 2008, it was replaced by the ANZ Championship.
The Trophy was an eight-team, single division round-robin competition, based around a fourteen-week season starting in May and ending in August. The top four teams played off in a knockout finals series, culminating in the Grand Final in the first week of September. While crowd turnout fell short of that in the three football codes, matches were generally attended by several thousand people, with a record crowd of 13,436 being achieved in 2004. This has necessitated a shift to larger venues, with smaller suburban venues of earlier years having to be abandoned in favour of larger city arenas. A significant number of games were shown both on free-to-air ABC TV and on pay television.
While the Commonwealth Bank Trophy was an elite competition, it lacked the attention and sponsorship of the two main football codes. This means that there was not the money to pay high player wages - indeed, according to Australian Workers' Union National Secretary Bill Shorten, many earned less than $4,000 a year from the sport. This means that the vast majority of players - including most of those in the Australian team - juggled training and game requirements with part-time or full-time employment, and raised their own funds if they were to afford added assistance such as the services of a physiotherapist. In an attempt to address this somewhat, most players in the competition made the decision to join the Australian Workers' Union in late 2005. The Union changed its registration rules to allow this to occur.
Australia had not had a national netball league of any form until 1985, when the Esso Superleague was formed. It saw the top teams from each state league face off against each other in a short national season. However, this meant that the teams representing each state changed from year to year, and many teams struggled to raise the sponsorship necessary or attract sizable enough crowds to meet the requirements of travelling interstate. The competition became the Mobil League in the early 1990s, but when it continued to struggle, Netball Australia decided to terminate it and look at setting up a permanent national league. Finally, they announced that the Mobil League would fold at the end of the 1996 season and be replaced by a new format in time for the next season.
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