ENGLAND: WORLD FASTNET CHAMPIONS. DOES ANYBODY KNOW?

1 December 2011, Harriet Millard

History was made on Sunday evening as the English netball team won their first ever title of a major championship, taking gold from reigning champions New Zealand in the FastNet World Netball Series.

This was England's first ever world title in one of the most popular female sports in the world, played regularly in this country by over 100,000 people per week. A sport so big, over 400 million people watched the World Championship final in Singapore in July.

Thus with eager anticipation fans all over Britain reached for the Monday morning sports section in the national papers to read about their new heroines.

But what did they read?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Instead there was lots of coverage for female boxing, even fencing, but not a single word on the World Title winning England Netball team who raised the trophy aloft live on Sky Sports.

How did we get to the situation whereby a sport only recently evolved such as female boxing gets more newspaper coverage than a sport that people have played since childhood for generations? Congratulations to boxing and fencing who are obviously marketing themselves really well.

Earlier in the year, England hosted New Zealand in a three test series culminating at the O2 Arena in front of 14,000 screaming fans. This made little or no coverage in our national dailys, yet it was a main sports story in New Zealand, picked up immediately.

Recent research into online media coverage of netball in England shows that netball has been covered very rarely in recent years, despite having a national Superleague shown on Sky. Not one of the national dailys even shows the scores in their results section.

However, Planet Netball is now planning to turn the tide and we need YOU and everyone you know to help us.

Why shouldn't Surrey Storm be as famous as Manchester United, and Tamsin Greenway as well known as Wayne Rooney? Indeed all our England heroines from last Sunday deserve the adulation from the great British public.

So here's the plan, netball fans...

Together we will implement the 'Netball In The Media Campaign'...

We need you to help Planet Netball alert the sports editors of the national papers, telling them that we as a champion netball nation want to read netball articles, see scores, and read interviews with players in our national press.

Download our template email, add your name, and send to the editors, and you will be helping to give netball the media coverage that the number one female team sport in England deserves.

ONLY YOU CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN, SO PLEASE GET EVERY FRIEND, FAMILY MEMBER, TEAMMATE, COLLEAGUE,- EVERYONE YOU KNOW WITH AN EMAIL ADDRESS, TO SEND IT ASWELL.

Only by inundating every sports editor, will we make a difference.

Click here to download the email and instructions.