By Nick Creely
Building that pathway from junior netball to senior netball is of the utmost importance to the Cranbourne Football Netball Club.
That’s why they’re willing to do what it takes to continue building the club’s juniors, an important ingredient of a healthy local sporting club with an eye for longevity and success.
The Eagles are looking to start up competitive in the Casey Netball Association as part of the football and netball club – played throughout the week – in order to facilitate this pathway, and hopefully bring about more interest in playing on the weekends in AFL Outer East.
As one of the most powerful clubs anywhere in the south-east, netball has always been a strong part of the fabric of the club.
At this stage, the Eagles have two 13 and under sides playing on Wednesday evenings, but they want to build on this, and encourage young netballers to give it a go.
One of Cranbourne’s Wednesday coordinators, Natalie Dickson said that the importance of creating a better pathway to senior netball can’t be underestimated.
“It’s very important, all the clubs felt a bit of a decline junior wise because of the change of league,” she said.
“I think parents, especially the younger parents, don’t understand much about it, so they stayed away a little bit this year because of the travelling.
“(But) we want to put our footy league teams there to start them on their pathway.
“We’ve got a couple of teams already, but we want to start building that there and have more teams that then come and play for us in the Outer East to build towards senior netball.”
The Eagles – who are hoping to get a mixture of Under 11s, 13s and 15s playing at the Casey Indoor Stadium throughout the week – will have registration tables on Saturday 1 June from 8.30am onwards, and then on Monday (3 June) and Wednesday (5 June) at the Casey Indoor Stadium from 4pm onwards.
