THIS Tuesday will be a monumental day for both netball in Scotland and women’s sport in this country as a whole.
Scotland’s first-ever professional netball team, the Sirens, will take the court for their first match in the UK-wide Vitality Netball Superleague with the upcoming season promising to work wonders for the profile of netball in this country as well as showcasing women’s sport in a way that has never been done before in Scotland.
Sirens have been awarded the privilege of opening the league when they take on Wasps on Tuesday at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow in a match that will be played in front of 4000 spectators and will also be live on Sky television.
Sirens’ squad is made up of a mixture of home-grown players and foreign imports and for Fiona Moore-McGrath, a Scottish internationalist and one of the squad’s most experienced players, the prospect of getting going after such a long build-up is exhilarating.
“I’m really excited about the first game – our build-up has gone really well and I just want to get started now,” the 31 year-old from Paisley says.
“Our imports arrived just after Christmas and we seem to have hit the ground running – we’ve gelled really well which is great because we’ve not had all that much time together.”
Sirens are not content with merely taking their place in the Superleague to make up the numbers though.
After being awarded their spot in the league, Netball Scotland made it clear that if Scotland was to have a professional team, they would be going into the league to win.
The international signings show the ambition of Sirens with some of the best netball players in the world making the move to Scotland to sign for the team with the 12-woman squad including Carla Borrego from Jamaica, a world championship bronze medallist and Ellen Halpenny, a New Zealander who won silver at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Moore-McGrath is clear that the team has the belief that they can compete with the very best.
“We want to do well, that’s for sure,” she says. “We’ve got a heavy schedule – we’ve got 18 games in total and some are only three days apart so it’ll be full-on but we’ve got 12 really strong players.
“We’ve got a real mix of players – there’s some in their 30s like me and there’s teenagers who have that fearlessness which is great and there’s a real competitiveness in our training – everybody is striving to be the best they can because everyone wants to be selected and I think that’s really healthy and great for the team.”
The rate of growth of netball in this country in recent years is quite remarkable.
The profile of the sport was has been growing slowly but surely over the past decade but the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow three years ago saw an explosion of interest in both watching and participation in the sport.
This enthusiasm is highlighted by the 4000-strong crowd that will squeeze into the Emirates Arena on Tuesday to watch the Sirens make their debut and Moore-McGrath is confident that the popularity of the sport will continue to grow.
“I think Sirens being in the Superleague will be massive for the sport in Scotland,” she says. “Since the Commonwealth Games, we’ve been competing well on the international stage but to move forward again as a country, we needed something domestically so the establishment of the Sirens is so important.
“The game is doing really well at grassroots level now and so for these young girls to be able to see that they can become professional players themselves is huge.”
That Moore-McGrath is a part of Sirens’ squad at all is somewhat remarkable.
Eighteen months ago, she announced her retirement from international netball and only 10 months ago, she gave birth.
However, the pull of Sirens got her back in the gym and while she admits that the road back has not always been easy, it has been well worth the slog.
“Mentally, coming back wasn’t too hard but physically it was tough getting my fitness back because your body changes so much after having a baby,” she says. “But when I heard about the Sirens, I really wanted to try out for the team – I played for Glasgow Wildcats when they were in the Superleague years ago so I felt like I had some unfinished business.
“It’s a really exciting opportunity and it’s great timing that this growth in the sport has happened while I’m still able to play.
“If I think back to when I was playing netball in school, to be in this position now is astounding.”
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