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The Commonwealth Bank Trophy is the elite national competitition in Australian netball. It was established in 1997 as a true national league to replace the ailing, state club-based Mobil League. Designed from the beginning to be more marketable to the general public, it has seen large increases in crowd sizes and sponsorship over its predecessor.

Competition

The Trophy is an eight-team, single division round-robin competition, based around a fourteen week season starting in May and ending in August. The top four teams play off in a knockout finals series, culminating in the Grand Final in the first week of September. While crowd turnout falls short of that in the three football codes, matches are generally attended by several thousand people and growing, with a record crowd of 13,436 being achieved in 2004. This has necessitated a shift to larger venues, with smaller suburban venues of earlier years having to be abandoned in favour of larger city arenas. A significant number of games are shown both on free-to-air ABC TV and on pay television.

While the Commonwealth Bank Trophy is an elite competition, it lacks the attention and sponsorship of the three main football codes. This means that there is not the money to pay high player wages - indeed, according to Australian Workers Union National Secretary Bill Shorten, many earn less than $4,000 a year from the sport. This means that the vast majority of players - including most of those in the Australian team - must juggle training and game requirements with part-time or full-time employment, and must raise their own funds if they are to afford added assistance such as the services of a physiotherapist. In an attempt to address this somewhat, most players in the competition made the decision to join the Australian Workers Union in late 2005. The Union changed its registered rules to allow this to occur.

History

Australia had not had a national netball league of any form until 1985, when the Esso Superleague was formed. It saw the top teams from each state league face off against each other in a short national season. However, this meant that the teams representing each state changed from year to year, and many teams struggled to raise the sponsorship necessary or attract sizable enough crowds to meet the requirements of travelling interstate. The competition became the Mobil League in the early 1990s, but when it continued to struggle, Netball Australia decided to terminate it and look at setting up a permanent national league. Finally, they announced that the Mobil League would fold at the end of the 1996 season and be replaced by a new format in time for the next season.

The National Netball League, as it was initially called, had a more commercial focus from the beginning. Eight teams were created - two from New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia and one from Queensland and Western Australia. These were representative sides made up of the best players from each state, rather than being limited to members of whichever state club had qualified that particular year. The season was doubled in length, and the unpopular double-header contests (made necessary due to the financial limitations of the previous competition) were abolished. The teams were given generic mascots with the theme of birds in order to assist with marketing and merchandising, and the uniforms were revamped, with new brightly-coloured bodysuits being introduced to attempt to improve the image of the game. These last two moves did attract some controversy among players - several felt the use of birds as their mascots was condescending and sexist, and some felt that the new uniforms were using sex to sell the games.

The changes had an immediate impact in terms of sponsorship, as the Commonwealth Bank signed on as naming rights sponsor and several others followed suit, bringing in far more than the Mobil League had. They also brought sizable media attention in the months leading up to the first season of the new Commonwealth Bank Trophy. While netball authorities were disappointed with the low turnout at the early games, crowds rose substantially throughout the first season, and by its end, some smaller venues, such as Melbourne's Waverley Netball Centre were already becoming too small. People had to be turned away at some later games; an event that had rarely, if ever, happened in the Mobil League.

Teams

Team	Logo	City	Home Venue
Adelaide Thunderbirds	File:Adelthunderbirdslogo.png	Adelaide, South Australia	ETSA Park
AIS Canberra Darters	File:Aiscandarterslogo.png	Canberra, Australian Capital Territory	AIS Arena
Hunter Jaegers	File:Hunterjaegerslogo.png	Newcastle, New South Wales	Newcastle Entertainment Centre
Melbourne Phoenix		Melbourne, Victoria	State Netball and Hockey Centre
Melbourne Kestrels	File:Melbkestrelslogo.png	Melbourne, Victoria	State Netball and Hockey Centre
Perth Orioles		Perth, Western Australia	Challenge Stadium
Queensland Firebirds		Brisbane, Queensland	Chandler Arena
Sydney Swifts		Sydney, New South Wales	Sydney Olympic Park Sports Centre/ Sydney Superdome

Note: Many clubs play several "home" matches at alternate grounds.

Defunct Teams

• Adelaide Ravens (1997-2002, abolished to make way for the AIS Canberra Darters)
• Sydney Sandpipers (1997-2003, abolished to make way for the Hunter Jaegers)

Future expansion

With two of the most obvious potential new teams having been created in the past three years (Australian Institute of Sport/Canberra and Newcastle), it seems unlikely that there will be a change in the immediate future. If the competition remains capped at eight teams, the next most likely candidate for axing would appear to be the Melbourne Kestrels (the weaker of the city's two teams), as Melbourne is now the only city to have two teams in the Trophy, and removing any other would leave that area without a team at all.

If a change were to made, the most likely candidate for promotion would probably be a team from New Zealand, as there was some interest when the league was created of including New Zealand teams in the competition, and this has not yet occurred. However, there is also the possibility of a team from Tasmania, which has no team in the trophy, or, if the Kestrels were to replaced with another Victorian team, a team from Geelong, which has a venue that is being used for some Melbourne home games at present.

Commonwealth Bank Trophy Champions

• 1997: Melbourne Phoenix
• 1998: Adelaide Thunderbirds
• 1999: Adelaide Thunderbirds
• 2000: Melbourne Phoenix
• 2001: Sydney Swifts
• 2002: Melbourne Phoenix
• 2003: Melbourne Phoenix
• 2004: Sydney Swifts
• 2005: Melbourne Phoenix

• Netball in Australia