Netballers protest about detrimental lack of facilties

Netballers have staged a protest in Jersey's Royal Square about a lack of suitable courts that threatens the future of the sport.

The Jersey Netball Association - including the island's premier league Team Jets - currently play at Les Ormes.

Next spring, those courts are closing, and the JNA says the allocation of court time it has been given at the new Oakfield centre is not enough to run training across its full programme.

This morning in the Royal Square, wearing their kit and colours, netballers gathered to call for proper facilities to safeguard the future of the sport. 

JNA President Linda Andrews says they are losing 'vital pathways' that keep the sport alive, from juniors to seniors, and beginners to elite:

"We have 67 hours up there (Les Ormes) a week, and we'll have nowhere to go for that side of the programme, so it's just hit home. 

"We want to show the government how many people are affected.

"With Scrutiny putting out there that they want to challenge what's happening in sport, we thought now is our chance to be vocal about it. 

"It's more than a place to play netball. We had girls last night at training in the middle of their A-Levels, saying they just had to get out and get their exercise done. 

"There's a lot of laughter - a lot of hard work - but a lot of laughter that goes on and camaraderie."

The island's netball programme covers children from 5-11 - already some 300 strong after-school sessions, Youthnets from ages 11-14, the Under 18 league, community league, walking netball and back to netball.

"It's a massive programme, and we know we are doing a good job.  

"Just with our winter league, it's fourteen courts a week.  We have been offered five at Oakfield.  We are not able to get into Oakfield into 6pm, so our after-school classes can't exist.

"We have always been really polite, and quietly speak to ministers - but it has now come to a crunch point."

Channel 103 spoke to Ruby and Bea, Year 7 pupils who fear their netball journey will be cut short:

"We have not had a chance to go through the entire pathway.  We have just got into the U14 travelling squad.  If that had to stop it would be a real shame".

"It's like stopping mid-way through something that you didn't want to finish."

Another young netballer told us:

"I've met some of my best friends from netball, so the fact that some little girl in Year 6 isn't going to have the opportunity to do that makes me really sad."

The protest was timed to coincide with the Sports Minister in a public hearing with scrutiny politicians about sports provision in the island.

Constable Andy Jehan told Channel 103 he is working to find solutions:

"There are very few four-court netball centres in the UK, and we have to remember at times that we are an island of 100,000 residents.

"I am working with the Education Minister to try an unlock some of the estate - such as school halls - that belongs to the public of Jersey, to get used for sport more often.

"We just need to be smarter with our scheduling, and use the whole estate that the government has access to."