Netball New Zealand’s new administrative line-up needed, to borrow a basketball term, a “slam dunk” as they dealt with the first few months under the new regime. With a few wins under their belt, they would have created the opportunity to start rebuilding trust after the debacle of the last 18 months.
But they’ve missed the chance. They’re looking shambolic all over again. And they’ve made things worse, not better.
In case you missed it, the sporting organisation fluffed its lines last year, standing down powerhouse mentor Dame Noeline Taurua and running with a hybrid coaching group and mixed results through the 2025 international season.
The outcome of that process was that Taurua was reinstated, but the former chief executive and the majority of the board who had led the messy process resigned from the organisation earlier this year. A predominantly new board was then installed, and a new chief executive was appointed in May
The new leadership group will have had an enjoyable few weeks, patting themselves on the back while the sport’s flagship team, the Silver Ferns, with Taurua back in the coaching box, romped to victory in both the Commonwealth Games and most recently the Constellation Cup series against Australia.
But victory abroad doesn’t always overcome the issues back home. It’s been well documented that the sport has struggled to make its national championship financially viable. The willingness of television broadcasters to commit to the sport is critical for profile, sponsorship and public interest. But TV rights deals have languished and, so far, there is no news of a 2027 competition to follow on from the once high-profile ANZ Premiership.
Added to that, while we sit idle, the highly successful Australian competition, Suncorp Super Netball, has grasped the opportunity and proactively poached some of our top players.
Enter Anna Mowbray and her husband Ali Williams, the latter of whom knows a bit about high-performance sport. As co-owners, they’ve been influential in building Auckland FC, which quickly proved itself a well-regarded participant in football’s highly competitive A-League.
Mowbray and Williams came forward with a proposal to get a new netball competition up and running. As I understand it, their proposal included sponsorship support and an undertaking to take a big chunk of the financial risk. It seems that they had term sheets in place with sponsors, broadcasters and players.
For three or four months, the signs appeared encouraging. Talk of private investment, including speculation around the Mowbray/Williams team, first emerged in July. In August, new Netball New Zealand (NNZ) chief executive Jenna Wootton confirmed that private investment in the domestic competition was being seriously considered.
At the beginning of September, the two sides announced a partnership and signed a non-binding term sheet. There was then little public news for almost eight weeks. Players, however, were receiving encouraging weekly updates through the New Zealand Netball Players Association (NZNPA), despite it not being directly involved in the negotiations.
But last week it all changed. NNZ terminated the negotiations, apparently to the great surprise of the Mowbray/Williams team. The people inside the sport, including the players, seem to have been taken by surprise too. The announcement was silent on a reason for the change of heart or, for that matter, any suggestions of an alternative solution that was considered to be better.
Now let’s be clear. The people leading netball can do whatever they want with their sport. But like any organisation, these decisions require leaders to take their people and their supporters with them. And on that particular point, it seems pretty clear that NNZ has failed.
I’ve been a new CEO on a number of occasions. I’ve also been part of a brand new board, including a sporting board, two or three times. One of the things I’ve learned from those experiences is that you must understand the main priorities early, identify the most important people in the organisation, and work out how to take them with you as you drive the change process.
It seems that those leading NNZ haven’t had the benefit of such lessons.
When the announcement went public on Friday, Mowbray and Williams weren’t the only ones who were surprised. It hit the players like a bolt out of the blue. The media reactions said it all. Players who’d turned down overseas opportunities were left high and dry by their own association. And no one had told them that the announcement was coming.
In any sport, you must include the players in your analysis of “the most important people”.
That fact wasn’t lost on Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan, who cut to the chase earlier this week and spoke to NZNPA head Pippa Moore. She confirmed that “the players hadn’t been included in any of these conversations”. She went further, suggesting, on behalf of the players, that they’d offered to assist in finding a solution that everyone was happy with. But those offers fell on deaf ears.
In sport, your elite players are your shop window. How could a leadership group cut the players out of a conversation about the survival of a national championship?
In any management role, the ability to engage with your most valuable people is a critical skill. When you’re new in the job, it’s the most important task. You get in front of people in small groups, or one-on-one, and you listen to their views. You do it early and often. It’s important to build relationships with key people. Only then can mutual trust develop.
It’s no surprise that senior netballers told TVNZ during the week that there is a lack of trust between NNZ and the players. As one of the taxpayers contributing about $3 million a year to the sport, it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
The story has continued with claims that NNZ didn’t want to hand over the rights to the competition without the right to take it back. The lack of information about these discussions means I can only guess at what was proposed.
But assuming that Mowbray and Williams were looking to run the competition under licence from NNZ, such deals always have an expiry date. The initial term could be five, 10 or 15 years. There would be rights of renewal. The licensee will require an opportunity to recoup their investment. There would also be non-performance clauses that result in the relationship being terminated early. There should always be a pathway for the owner of the brand to take back their rights at the end of the term. I’m not sure why this would be an issue.
Our Silver Ferns, with the world’s best coaching group restored, are now back to their winning ways on the court. But NNZ needs to start winning off the court.
To do that, its new board and CEO need to understand what drives successful organisations and the people within them.
First up, you have to be really clear about what you’re trying to achieve, and how you’re going to go about doing so. You need to understand the resources, the talent and the funding to enable you to execute your plan.
Next up, you have to engage your people. Your people, and related stakeholders, can only help you to succeed in your objectives if they understand what you are trying to achieve. In this case, that means NNZ including the players in the discussions and the development of the plan.
It would seem that the leadership team at NNZ have much to learn in this space.
There’s another lesson in this sorry saga: Don’t put out press releases if you’re not prepared to tell the full story or be honest about the storyline. Why would you talk to the media before you talk to your own people?
If NNZ has a better option than the one put forward by Mowbray and Williams, it needs to start talking about it very quickly. And let’s hope it lets the players – the very people whose skills and abilities it is selling to the TV networks, and who will wear the logos of those sponsors who sign up – know what’s happening this time around.
Whatever it decides, it needs to move quickly. According to NNZ bosses, they are forecasting to lose $6m in the current financial year. Over half that loss is attributed to the troubled ANZ Championship. That means there’s still $2.3m of losses elsewhere that need to be fixed. They need to stop the rot.
Many of us are not convinced that the current leadership will be able to do so.
Unfortunately, during the past 10 years, New Zealand has progressively fallen into the trap of appointing people to leadership roles for reasons other than their being the best for the job. Cosy networks, political correctness and a bias for diversity, equity and inclusion often get in the way of the best outcome. Many of our organisations have become flag bearers for such appointments. NNZ provides a stark reminder of how that plays out.
Its new board and executive line-up hasn’t started well. With its top coach reinstated, it would appear that the leadership team might need some coaching of its own.
This article first appeared in The New Zealand Herald, Saturday 7th November, 2026.