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World Netball Series

Fast5 Netball World Series
Current season, competition or edition:
Current sports event2016 Fast5 Netball World Series
Fast5 Auckland 2012.jpg
2012 logo
Sport Netball (Fast5)
Inaugural season 2009
No. of teams 6
Most recent
champion(s)
 New Zealand
Most titles  New Zealand (6 times)
TV partner(s) Australia Nine Network
New Zealand Sky Sport
England Sky Sports

The Fast5 Netball World Series is an international netball competition that was contested for the first time in October 2009. The new competition features modified "Fast5" rules, and has been likened to Twenty20 cricket and rugby sevens. The competition is contested by the six top national netball teams in the world, according to the INF World Rankings.

Before 2008, the major competitions in international netball were the Netball World Championships and the netball event of the Commonwealth Games, both held every four years. First-tier national teams also participated in yearly test series, with others playing in regional events. However, several significant changes in international netball occurred in 2008. Changes to international test rules were finalised at an International Federation of Netball Associations (IFNA) congress in Auckland in 2007, and progressively rolled out across netball-playing countries the following year. The IFNA also introduced a new world rankings system to compare the performances of national teams. In England, a campaign was started advocating netball's inclusion in the Olympic Games, as a demonstration sport in 2012 and potentially as a competitive sport from 2016. In the Southern Hemisphere, the sport attained semi-professional status in Australia and New Zealand with the introduction of the ANZ Championship.

Also, in December 2008 a new international netball competition was announced, the World Netball Series, to be contested in 2009 under modified rules. The new rules had been trialled by England junior and senior squads over a 12-month period. DVDs were sent to coaches of the participating teams for consultation. Some of the new rules were announced in December 2008, including six-minute playing quarters and power plays; others were announced in February 2009.

Prior to the 2012 edition the rules were revamped and renamed Fast5.

The competition is held over three days, and is played under Fast5 rules. Each team plays each other once during the first two days in a round-robin format. The four highest-scoring teams from this stage progress to the finals, played on the final day of competition, in which the 1st-ranked team plays the 4th-ranked team, while 2nd plays 3rd. The winners of these two matches contest the Grand Final; the remaining teams contest the third- and fifth-place playoffs.


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