Netball: Is funding boost for 'uncool' sport 'ludicrous'?

On the face of it British netball has had a good week. In a thrilling performance, England Roses lost by one point to world champions Australia in a match shown live on the BBC. On Monday netball was awarded £16.9m by Sport England for grassroots development.

Netball has been entrusted with more public money than rugby union and tennis and there will be an extra £3m on offer to help the England team prepare for the 2019 world cup (they came third in 2015).

It's the latest big stride for the sport. The England team turned professional last year and the UK's recently expanded Netball Superleague, with teams from England, Scotland and Wales, begins this month. Some of the game's biggest names will be heading Down Under for the inaugural Super Netball competition in Australia, where the sport has a much higher profile and players are regarded as bona fide sports stars.

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Against that backdrop the Sport England grant is aimed at increasing participation in netball as part of "the new strategy Sport England has been asked to follow by the government", says Sky Sports. "Less money on sport for the sporty and more on persuading the inactive to do some exercise."

But will the recruitment drive succeed? Not everyone seems convinced. Morwenna Ferrier of The Guardian describes netball as "the least-cool sport in the history of all sport", despite the fact she plays every week.

It has a bad reputation at schools and "complex rules" with "tremendous restrictions on movement", she says, while "marking an opponent requires a player to do a modified Nazi salute".

"It fits the British sensibility: dogged, pack-like, rule-following folk, open to controlled violence and cheating within reason. It's a non-contact sport but we have our ways round that. It's diverse, especially in London, but has always had a reputation for being slightly elitist."

Eleanor Steafel of the Daily Telegraph is even less impressed. She claims £16.9m is a "ludicrous sum of money to set aside to get women stubbing their fingers on netballs in the freezing cold".

What's more, netball is already the most popular sport for women in the country. "I can think of a few (hundred) other areas most women would like to see more investment in," she says.

To make matters worse the game is overly competitive. Those who currently play "may be barristers and accountants by day, but on the netball court they're the same ruthless teenage girls they used to be... And to add insult to inevitable injury, you don't even have the comfort of wearing an anonymous Gore-Tex uniform – any adult netball player worth her salt needs an array of suitably trendy and expensive workout gear to don each week."

Those already in the netball sisterhood are less than impressed by the reaction: