Dispelling the creation myth of netball in NZ

A University of Auckland researcher is investigating the beginnings of netball in New Zealand and they are more complex than what we’ve been led to believe.

“Sport likes to have a very clear and uncomplicated creation myth and the truth is usually far more complex than that,” Dr Margaret Henley says.

The senior tutor in media and communications noticed that the exact same version of how the game got established in New Zealand kept coming out in every book about netball.

The assumption has been that ‘women’s basketball’ was introduced to New Zealand in 1906 by the Reverend J. C. Jamieson, travelling secretary of the Presbyterian Bible Class Union.

It was believed that the Reverend had seen the game being played in Australia.

In 1906 or 1907 a demonstration game was played by YMCA and Bible class teams in a paddock in Mt Eden, Auckland.

“Photos were very rare then but there’s a photo from that game. It gets used repeatedly to mark the exact time netball was first played in Aotearoa and the Rev Jamieson as the pioneer of the first game.”

A photo from 1906 or 1907 when a demonstration game was played by YMCA and Bible class teams in a paddock in Mt Eden, Auckland. This photo has been used repeatedly to mark the exact time netball was first played in Aotearoa. It’s likely this was a nine-aside game. Reverend J. C. Jamieson’s photo is inset.
Photo: Supplied

The Reverend Jamieson travelled around New Zealand and started to train bible classes.

“He was very involved in the YMCA movement, you know the muscular Christianity movement that became very influential at that time.”

After his first wife died the reverend married ‘Connie’ Constance Jamieson and Henley said before they had children she travelled around with him.

“My usual starting point is it’s all very well for Mr Jamieson but what about Mrs Jamieson?

“There is evidence in newspaper articles that Constance Jamieson was indeed helping him and that she gave talks about playing this game of basketball and so they did demonstration matches. So that was happening from about 1906 onwards.”

The assumption is that these were the first games of basketball/proto-netball being played in New Zealand but Henley said there is evidence that seldom gets mentioned, that it was as early as 1897.

Early records

“There was a young teacher at Wanganui High School and it appears she had her students playing some form of netball in 1897 and school reports refer to her coaching the girls basketball team in 1898-99.

“There is a direct reference to basketball being played in the winter term by 14 players and they played on grass tennis courts and one asphalt court they had.”

Henley said there was evidence that there was a form of basketball being played down at Otago Girls around 1902 /1903.

“What exactly that game was, it’s hard to know. We were developing the 9-aside game, but five aside and seven aside variations were also being played of a game of some sort of basketball, as it was called back then.”

“There’s all different ways that the game came to us, it was played earlier than we thought. What game was being played is very hard to ascertain, but I don’t think that we should get hung up on that because nothing is that simple.

“Like the myth that you know the second that Webb Ellis decided to pick up the rugby ball and run with it became the birth of rugby. It’s such a good, simple creation story, which then becomes enshrined in your heritage of the game.”

Netball being played at the Auckland Domain in 1910.
Photo: Supplied

Henley believes that’s what happened by default to the Reverend Jamieson.

“And I don’t want to discredit what the Reverend did because it was significant but I believe Mrs Jamieson was also in there.”

Henley said a lot of gym teachers and women who were in the YWCA movement were heavily involved in developing and organizing netball provincially.

“A lot of school teachers absolutely nurtured the game and within training colleges too it was seen as being a very universal, egalitarian game for girls, which didn’t need any real special equipment or clothing.”

Henley said there would have been significant regional variations around the turn of the century when people travelled around New Zealand by coach or steamer and there were no opportunities for inter-regional competitions.

How it came here

The origins of netball itself are also quite fragmented.

Basketball started with James Naismith in 1891 in Massachusetts, United States, who wanted to develop an indoor sport for his students at the YMCA Training School. His game was first played in the campus gymnasium between two teams of nine players.

Soon afterwards female teachers in the US started adapting the game for women and Henley said rules were designed to depower it.

“So no snatching or batting the ball from one another to limit the roughness, and restricting players to thirds so they didn’t run around as much because women were we’re going to drop dead if they over exercised.

“The three second time limit was to make sure that no girl hogged the ball, that it was all about the team and no stars. And that’s actually very central to netball today and has actually created the pace of the game now which is really exhilarating.”

Early photo of school netball in New Zealand. Normal School, Wellesley Street, Auckland. Believed to be taken around 1908.
Photo: Supplied

Henley said the game started to splinter.

“There was a form of netball that was played in Continental Europe, which is closer to modern indoor basketball. And the Dutch game of korfball developed out of that and there were variations of handball in there.”

Henley said was a great deal of enthusiasm for new games for the new world and the first generation of the woman’s liberation were coming through.

“That freeing up of women to be more physical was a very important part of all of that and that’s where Swedish-born Martina Österberg came into this. She followed the Swedish Ling Gymnastics method and very much believed in female emancipation and social, economic, spiritual freedom for women.

“She was trained in Sweden, but she founded a training college for young women in England in 1885 in Hampstead and then she moved it to Dartford in 1895.”

As part of her research Henley spent a day at the netball museum at the Dartford College site.

“She started bringing in a form of netball outside, Österberg’s girls were playing it out on a field. Some of her pupils went out and founded training colleges, and they were also doing versions of the game.”

Henley said some of those young women would have come out to work in schools in New Zealand and Australia.

“There is evidence from around the 1910s to 1915 of schools writing to Dartford College and asking for a gym mistress to come out.

“So netball came to New Zealand from the US through the basketball-YWCA movement, and from England through gym mistresses that came through the Martina Österberg Hampstead training college.”

No accident netball took off

Hockey was once the dominant game in New Zealand for women, but around the turn of the century there was growing concern about women playing it.

“There was a feeling that hockey was a bit too strenuous, a bit too masculine, rough and vigourous. Also, the subtext here is that it took up areas that were wanted by boys and men for their sports, because it required a field.”

The early versions of netball in New Zealand were played on a field but it very quickly moved to asphalt tennis courts.

“That was the only bit of turf that was not required for men or boys’ sport during the winter. It’s no accident that netball increasingly moved onto these repurposed tennis courts.”

Netball being played in New Zealand in 1932.
Photo: Supplied

Henley said it became our national sport for a whole set of social, cultural, and economic reasons but a lot of it had to do with the gendered nature of social space.

“Allocated space that women could use, was far less then men. The development of rugby and other male sports – none of that was predicated around access to space or playing fields.”

Single sex schools were allocated significantly less space than boys schools when originally established.

By 1927 netball had surpassed hockey as the dominant game for young women and girls in New Zealand.

Henley said Māori girls were playing netball as soon as it started coming through the physical education curriculum for schools.

“Māori girls were playing for Hukarere Girls’ College in 1914 and in 1915 they gave the girls of Woodford House in the Hawke’s Bay a complete pasting.

“They even wrote up in the school journal that ‘the Hukarere girls played a beautiful game. It is so pretty to watch them.’ They went on to say ‘We were hopelessly outclassed and badly beaten, but we had a glorious tussle and spent a delightful afternoon’.”

The Hukarere Girls referred to their game as basketball, but the Woodford House school called it hyphenated – net-ball.

Uniformity

In 1924 the New Zealand Basketball Association was set up, the first association formed in the netball playing world.

“Part of the forming of the association was actually trying to get regulation around the rules of how the game was being played throughout New Zealand. There were still lots of variations but it was basically the nine aside basketball game by the time the association was formed.”

The game developed differently across the Commonwealth and it wasn’t until 1938 that our first team went to play Australia and they were playing the seven aside game.

New Zealand was the last country to move from the nine aside to seven aside game.

Netball being played in New Zealand in 1929.
Photo: Supplied

“We sort of championed the 9-aside game for a range of reasons and it was deemed to be the best way that the most number of girls could get a game because they had such little space.”

It wasn’t until 1970 that New Zealand dropped basketball for the name netball.

Henley wants to conclude her research to coincide with Netball New Zealand’s 100 year centenary in 2024.

Henley has had to dig deep given there is far less archived material that relates to women’s sport than there is for men’s.

“And the women executives tended to keep the records in their own home, because they often didn’t have a headquarters so some of that material has been lost over time.

“We have such little depth to our understanding of our netball history and why it became the national game for women, what it gave women and why women nurtured it in this way.”