Netball in Asia

Netball is popular in several parts of Asia. The IFNA Asia region includes countries such as Australia (geopolitically considered part of Oceania), India, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka. The major regional competition is the Asian Netball Championship. In 1994, the first Asian Youth Championship was held in Hong Kong.

Netball has the highest participation rate of any team sport—male or female—in Australia; however, it has not managed to become a large spectator sport. In 2005 and 2006, netball was the 10th most popular spectator sport for women after tennis. The country set an attendance record for a netball match with a record crowd of 14,339 at the Australia – New Zealand Netball Test held at the Sydney SuperDome game in 2004.

Netball was brought to Australia by English school teachers, with a team having been organised by 1904 at Parramatta Superior Schools. In 1927, a national federation for the sport, Australian Women's Basketball Association, was created. During the 1930s in Australia, much of the participation in netball at universities was not organised and players were not required to register. It was believed that this was a positive for netball as it allowed people to participate who might not have participated otherwise. Australia's national team toured England in 1957. This tour resulted in a number of Commonwealth countries meeting together in order to try to standardise the rules of the game. The sport's name "netball" became official in Australia in 1970. Netball was one of the eight foundation sports when the Australian Institute of Sport was created. The national federation changed their name to Netball Australia in 1995. The Government of New South Wales committed over A$5,000,000 to creating and improving sporting facilities in the state. Some of this funding went to improving netball facilities.

In Australia 80% of netball is played at netball clubs. The number of netball clubs around Australia has been in decline since the 1940s. Still, there are around 350,000 registered players and over 1.2 million total players in the country. Prior to the creation of the ANZ Championship, the National Netball League was the major competition in Australia. It included teams from the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.

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