Lesley MacDonald is a veteran of three World Championships and has been one of Scotland’s leading netball players for over a decade, but she is hoping that renewed interest in the sport due to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow will bring a new generation of players to compete for her place in the team.

This year a Scottish franchise will join the hugely successful Co-operative Netball Superleague, bringing with it much-needed funding for a sport that has often been overlooked in the past.

MacDonald is one of only a handful of Scottish players who have experienced the Superleague up close having played for Team Northumbria, this season’s league runners up, for the past two seasons.

 “There’s a considerable difference between the standards in Scottish club netball and the Superleague. The majority of the English national team are spread throughout the league there.

“There are also players from abroad as each team is allowed three overseas players. Learning from their knowledge and experience has been really good for us,” she explained.

Now more Scots will have the chance to test their game against England’s best players.

“We’ve not had a lot of planning or preparation time from gaining entry to the league at the end of March to the start of the new season at the end of October,” says the 28-year-old goal shooter, who adds that a full-time coach for the national side will be appointed this summer.

“The Scotland team has lacked regular competition up to now so this is only going to improve our standard and help the youngsters coming through.”

While the Superleague side is likely to be dominated by the top senior players it will also provide much-needed experience for those players coming through the ranks from junior to Under-21 and beyond.

For top players like MacDonald the new funding that sportscotland announced for the sport this week will be a massive boost.

On top of training and preparation for last year’s World Championships in New Zealand the team also had to work hard at fundraising to get to the showpiece event but an investment of £227,000 will mean that the players of the future will not have to do this.

“We had to work very hard to fundraise towards New Zealand. In the end we had all of the support mechanisms there but only because we had done the fundraising beforehand.

“Now that sportscotland have come on board the players won’t have to think about that sort of thing and there will be extra benefits like access to strength and conditioning that we didn’t have as much before.”

Scotland are currently ranked 17 in the world, having improved their position by one place at the World Championships but it is hoped that more competition at a higher level will push the team even further.

“The World Championships were a totally different experience for a lot of the players,” said MacDonald. “You came up against lots of different styles of play. Being part of the Superleague I had some experience of it but a lot of the players hadn’t experienced that before.”

With the new developments in the sport the team that travels to Singapore in 2011 will be better prepared to take on the top teams in the world.

AW
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