Netball 10-1-1 Conference

Saturday 1 September 2007
East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham

Saturday 1 September saw England Netball’s National 10-1-1 Conference in Nottingham. With over 100 delegates and an impressive key-note speaker attendance, the day provided an opportunity for England Netball members to hear the 10-1-1 Vision and have their say for the future of Our Great Game.

Welcome from the Chairman

Cheryl Danson, England Netball’s Chairman opened the conference thanking everyone for attending and introducing the key note speakers – Jennie Price, Chief Executive of Sport England, Mark Gannon, Head of Marketing at sports coach UK and Liz Broomhead who would be discussing England Netball’s work abroad.

Cheryl went on to outline some of England Netball’s achievements over the past year and whilst it had been a challenging year with the change of  CEO, many positive achievements had been made, including the increase in affiliations, achievement of UKCC level 1 and 2 endorsement, Foundation and Preliminary level achievement of the Equality Standards for Sport, a very successful Test Series and of course historic win over New Zealand! 

Key Note Speakers

Jennie Price presented to the conference on ‘together for sport’ a copy of which is available on website.

Jennie outlined some key points including

• The importance of the delivery system and the ‘people behind the people’ – i.e. coaches, volunteers, umpires, parents
• Clarity about Sport England’s priority to increase participation in 16+ year olds although it was noted some support is still available to development work with 14-16 year old and performance athletes
• The Sporting Landscape – clarity about who does what with what funding and when. Every aspect of the sporting landscape must be covered and delivered – funding may vary
• Jennie herself could not remember a time in the last 12 years or so when funding has been tighter. At the moment we are in a tough funding environment. There will be a lot less money going forward. In some ways negative but overall not a disaster, what we need is good evidence based decision making
• A New 4 year cycle for 2009 – 2013 – potential to grow participation and placing in active people critical – growth participation
• The Active people survey is an important tool to help us measure participation and currently shows that 21% of the population are active in some way but Jennie did recognise that the survey tells us nothing about people doing no activity – much more research is needed

Mark Gannon then presented to the conference ‘The changing landscape of coaching and the UK Coaching Framework’.

Mark outlined some key points including

• Netball’s progress at levels 1-3 of the UKCC
• Netball identified by scUK as a trailblazer sport – it means Netball is recognised as leading the way in some areas of coaching and coaching development work.
• The UK Coaching Framework is a framework not a system. Built by the industry and led by scUK. Sets clear direction, policy and practice
• Mark explained all 5 strategic action areas of the UK Coaching Framework
• We are driving for the best possible coaches for all participants – why not – that is what we and they should expect
• In summary there is a real opportunity ahead to really achieve both organisations visions

England Netball then responded to the challenges set down from Sport England and scUK and the conference heard from Paul Clark - Interim CEO, Karen Rothery – Commercial Director and Nigel Holl – Director of Netball.

Paul Clark opened the presentation by thanking everyone for their attendance and that it was a welcome opportunity for him to address the Netball membership.

Paul explained how it was vital that we now concentrate on building the new business plan and how a clear vision needed to be set out for the future of Netball in England. On a series on slides, Paul set out a mission that was ‘To make a difference through Netball’ and using a series of slides that can be found on this webpage that is supported by 3 vision statements that represent 10-1-1

Netball 10 – We aspire to establish Netball as a top 10 participation sport in England
Netball 1 – We aspire to establish Netball as the first choice for women and girls
Netball 1 – We aspire to achieve and maintain Number 1 World ranking status

Paul went on to set out the strategic framework, planning horizons and next steps/timelines for the business plan.

Paul concluded by summarising his key messages – to apply business principles, invest in our workforce, retain and grow the membership and act as one team working towards one vision.

Karen Rothery then addressed the conference primarily focussing on one of the three main vision statements - Netball 1 – We aspire to establish Netball as the first choice for women and girls.

Karen discussed the role of the media as a vital factor in growing female sport and how a serious inequality of coverage remains as it does with funding through sponsorship.

Over the past couple of years, England Netball have been working on developing the ‘brand of Netball’ and Karen explained how this is of continual importance. Making Netball cool is important to our future growth and marketing potential and the need for strong aspirational role models, improving the image and profile of Netball as well as getting on the telly and stating on the telly are vital factors.

Karen went on to launch a new casual kit range with Kukri that would be available in high street shops in the Autumn and Netball viewing figures had far exceeded anticipated viewing figures during the last NSL season.

In conclusion, Karen showed a short DVD of how NSL would look next year in partnership with Sky.

The third of the three presentations from the Corporate Management Team came from Nigel Holl, newly appointed Director of Netball. Nigel’s team focuses on 2 areas of the visions

Netball 10 – We aspire to establish Netball as a top 10 participation sport in England
Netball 1 – We aspire to achieve and maintain Number 1 World ranking status

Nigel explained the ‘Active People’ survey conducted by Sport England and how this will be used as a measure of participation levels in sport. Netball is currently ranked as 24th but if you remove all non-competitive sports (e.g. walking aerobics, yoga) then Netball immediately rises to 12th place. With the aspiration to be a top 10 sport, Netball has a little way to go and Nigel outlined some ideas of how this may be achieved.

Nigel reinforced the importance of us all working together to achieve what is a challenging target but ultimately for the good of Netball.

The second part of Nigel’s session was in relation to achieveing and maintaining the number 1 world ranked Netball country.

Bronze to Gold is a tough challenge, England is currently ranked 4th in the world as of the last World Championship but the establishment of the new competition structure and the current competitive structures stand us in better stead. Unfortunately thought, the opposition do not stand still either! Australia and New Zealand have just launched the Trans Tasman Competition and we can’t ignore the emerging countries either – Malawi!!

With new world ranking systems being proposed at the next congress meeting means any country could in theory achieve No 1 world ranking outside a world championship competition, and of course could loose the ranking too!

An exciting time is ahead for the performance teams with the World Champs in November and then recruitment of the new National and U21 coach positions to be followed by the recruitment of a new Performance Manager the future is challenging but we hope bright!

In conclusion to the entire session, Nigel concluded with the following

• 3 parts to the vision – all integrated and supporting each other
•  International success, feeds improved profile, leading to increased participation, making Netball the choice for girls and women – cyclical impact
• This vision must drive all our thinking, planning, and delivery. It will meet our members needs, our participants needs, and our partners needs
• Join us in making a difference through Netball

To conclude the morning, Liz Broomhead provided the delegates with summary of England Netballs’ partnership with Netball Europe, IFNA and UK Sport in developing Netball in Southern Africa. A copy of Liz’s presentation is also available on the website.

Afternoon Workshops

After lunch 4 workshops were held and delegates had the opportunity to attend 2 of them. A summary of each workshop is below
Coaching Workshop
 
The workshop was divided into 2 parts:
 
Part 1 - A Question of Coaching?  
A short quiz with questions regarding the UKCC Coaching courses.  This was a team participation exercise and was an alternative way of informing people of the current achievements and up-dates.  Keenly contested and fun.
 
Part 2 - Coaching Framework and Coaching Strategy  
A continuation from the Conference delivery by scUK in the morning.  Groups were invited to identify coaching priorities: locally, county and regionally and a time scale these could be achieved - 3yrs / 7yrs / 11 yrs.  Each group then chose their most important priority and fed back accordingly.
 
More tutors and support
Communication and continuous up-dates

• Audit of coaching needs
• More coaches available on demand
• Finding grants to assist cost of qualifications
• Extending the validation of old awards
   
  All information gathered will be fed back to the 'Coaching Strategy' group meeting at the end of the month.

Safeguarding (CRB) workshop
 
Headline information was provided about::

• Finalising of the procedures and guidelines which underpin the published Safeguarding and Protecting Young People in Netball Policy
• The work to achieve the national safeguarding standards
• The ongoing efforts to recruit Regional Welfare Officers in those regions that have not currently been successful
   
  We then had discussion around:
  What a CRB disclosure is and what it tells us; why we do them; where we can get additional information relating to a volunteer and the current portability status of the disclosure information. This led us to "CRB - Next Steps for England Netball" and how the process would be rolled out to the membership.

Participation Workshop

A brief introduction was given.

The workshop was split into 5 groups and then did 10 minutes discussion work about ideas and thoughts on how to increase participation. 2 groups focused on aged 14-16 to ensure they retain in the sport, 3 groups did 16+.

They then fed back for a couple of minutes each group.

The main themes were:

• we need to consult with these age groups to see what they want
• we need to look at affiliation being more flexible
• support for mixed netball
• we need to ensure we have suitable and quality coaches.

A presentation was then given on the back to netball project based in Wirral.
There was a good response to this, a few people from each workshop stopped to ask more information.

Post workshop – a partnership has been developed with WSF in the North West to start a research programme in the subject area.

Officiating Workshop

Why are you here?

• To get any new initiatives
• To find out what strategies there are for keeping umpires in the 'job'
  Response: CH did an update on the Umpiring Strategy group - confirmed that some of the points raised in these workshops will assist in the USG work
•  Wanted to report back anything to their county
•  Any update on Rules
  Response: SR re World Championships and Congress and then EN will agree timescales to disseminate and commence any rule changes
• Anything on Tutoring or Mentoring
• Are there any Development Pathways - clearer routes
  Response: BA on work in Netball Europe to look at 'fast tracking'

Some questions followed and noted with discussion

• Reluctance in young people to go into umpiring while playing
• Young people might come into officiating when playing  - if they were paid for it
• To pay or not to pay (This came up in both sessions)
  Response: SR This will be looked at together with how it can be controlled and monitored i.e. performance level of umpire and to ensure that umpires do not umpire too many games in one day
• Marketing of tutoring
• RCL struggle to find officials of correct standard
• B courses - not enough
  Response: SR need to ensure that these are communicated on the website via the regions - as anyone can attend any course anywhere in the country)
• Need incentives to get umpires to move from C-B and B-A
• Officiating should be part of being a netballer
• Quality assurance v important
• Use of Competition Key - e.g. RCL CCL
• Why is Course attendance required - why do umpires being mentored have to have attended a course before taking the award?
  Response: SR this will be looked at together with the new initiatives being put through via Netball Europe
• The new structure no longer shows technical support groups and it was felt this was a missed opportunity
  Response: CH this will be looked at via the Umpiring Strategy Group
• Revise fees for tutoring - why is there a different level for taking a C course and a B course - Feel that the work is the same for both
  Response: This was received on a post it note and will be looked at
  Key official messages required (Membership Committee) - communication fed through this channel

Conference Conclusions

A question and answer session was then held before the Chairman thanked all for attending what been a very successful day and gave her conference conclusion.

Downloads

Work Shop Outcomes: 10-1-1 Officiating
                                     Participation Workshop 
                                     Coaching Priorities

Presentations:              Presentation 07 Conference (EN Main presentation) 
                                     Liz Broomhead Presentation 
                                    Togther in Sport (Sport England Presentation)
                                    Safeguarding and Protecting Young Children (Helen Murdock)