Netball's Journey: From 'Girly Game' to Olympic Ambition

"Big up the netballers. That sport is so difficult."

- Stormzy, May 2026

Derived from basketball and developed by teenagers in late-Victorian England, netball is sport's great misunderstood "girly game".

A hotbed of feminist rebellion, its corset-shattering, myth-busting history encompasses a journey of emancipation, imagination, and healthy disdain for patriarchal expectations.

Netball is one of the Commonwealth Games' great sports, and Glasgow 2026 will thrust it into the spotlight again: sinew-stretching athleticism, pinpoint shooting, frantic end-to-end pace.

British rap superstar Stormzy ripped ligaments in his fingers, the first time he played netball. Underestimate the physical demands of this non-contact sport at your peril.

But netball's leaders have an even greater platform than the Commonwealth Games in mind, not least because doubts linger over the long-term future of that event.

If ambitious efforts come to fruition, netball will be rewarded with an Olympic Games debut at Brisbane 2032, "future-proofing" it for future generations.

So yes, that sport you played in the school playground was slyly, quietly revolutionary.

But the suffragist Swede who pioneered netball in England was anything but quiet.

Martina Bergman Osterberg was a powerhouse liberal, a college owner and principal who strategically and scientifically set out to build "physically perfect" women before dispatching them to teach and create more in their likeness.

Netball was a mid-1890s by-product of her extraordinary physical education college operation - a fitting launchpad for a sport that has had to scuffle for attention, respect and a worthy stage, and has achieved all that thanks to decades of female steadfastness.

The by-product is pivoting into its professional era in the 21st century.

Elite netball teams are relocating from sports halls to major arenas, and players are noticing a difference in their pay packets.

Australia's Suncorp Super Netball is where the top money is for now and, while salaries are veiled in secrecy, the cream of the crop there are reputedly nudging close to the six-figure mark.

Rank-and-file in the UK-based Netball Super League are scraping into five figures and often working second jobs, although full-time marquee players fare much better.

Netball Super League is two years into a 10-year pathway to professionalism.

England were Commonwealth Games gold medallists in 2018 and World Cup runners-up in 2023. Such feats drive public interest, and attendances jumped by 45% in the first year of the professional journey.

And it remains a sport driven by women, as Osterberg would doubtless have wanted.

She was a brilliantly radical leader: demolishing the concept of men being best suited to train women, dismissing rival teaching methods, and convincing head teachers they needed her college graduates to run their physical education programmes.

A magazine account admiringly described Osterberg's students, typically in their late teens, as "teachers in embryo... destined high priestesses of a new cult".

That verdict came in 1897, towards the end of a century in which women who exercised and played sports had frequently faced disapproval.

Through her audacity and fierce self-belief, Osterberg was a prime mover in rewriting the playbook for women in British sport.

And it was not beyond her to borrow a good idea...

Osterberg courted Britain's middle and upper classes for her college, deciding most elementary school girls were "absolutely unfit to be trained... their muscles have been starved from babyhood".

She was a disciple of the anatomy-based, apparatus-free gymnastics 'Swedish system', and this specialism defined her teaching.

Osterberg was irritated by claims women had "a faulty battery pack" that needed preserving for motherhood and wifedom, netball historian Margaret Henley told BBC Sport.

Henley, a lecturer from the University of Auckland, has studied netball deeply, both locally and globally.

"It is unique - the only sport that I have been able to find that is completely controlled, operated, designed by, played by women over its history," Henley said.

"It is a team sport that men do not play or, if they play, there's netball and there's men's netball. It's distinct from rugby and women's rugby and football and women's football. Women are the benchmark of how the game is played.

"It links it quite strongly to women's very quiet, unobtrusive emancipation, within the Commonwealth particularly.

"It's seen as being sort of a girly game because it's played by women. If you've watched a bit of netball, you'll know that there's nothing traditionally girly about the way netball's played."

Henley said netball initially encouraged teamwork, alongside having "a hell of a good time".

"The women found leadership, management skills, financial skills, where they were previously confined to the house and the domestic role," she said.

"So really it's a misunderstood hotbed of feminist advancement - because it disguised its purposes so carefully."

While staunchly feminist, Osterberg often expressed her vision in social Darwinist terms.

It was the Penny Pictorial Magazine of 1900 that painted Osterberg's Dartford campus as "the one institution in the world which has for its single aim and object the production of physically perfect women".

Netball flourished alongside hockey, tennis, cricket, cycling, swimming and dancing, while students were taught anatomy, physiology and hygiene, theory of movement, massage and medicine gymnastics.

Truly a finishing school like no other.

Netball reputedly has 13 million players globally. England has the most active players of all countries with three million, and Africa has the most of all continents.

Traditionally, a Commonwealth-centric sport, there is no mistaking Glasgow 2026 is a major occasion for netball.

At the same time, the Commonwealth Games is grappling for survival, amid concerns over hosting costs and growing questions about relevancy to the modern world given its foundations in Britain's colonial past.

The event remains "hugely important to netball", World Netball president Dame Liz Nicholl told BBC Sport, pointing out over 150,000 tickets were sold for netball at Birmingham 2022.

"We strongly support the Commonwealth Games and want to see it thrive," she said. "But the future of netball cannot depend on one event."

Chelsea Pitman, a Commonwealth gold medallist with England in 2018 and now head coach at Nottingham Forest, told BBC Sport: "We need it. If the Olympics becomes part of netball, [it would be] absolutely amazing. But Commonwealth Games allows netball to be part of a multi-sport, massive masterpiece of sport. There's nothing like it."

England head coach Anna Stembridge agrees, telling BBC Sport: "It's a really important part of our history... a really important part of our four-year cycle."

There's another stumbling block: netball is no longer guaranteed a Commonwealth Games platform, with only athletics and swimming now designated as core sports.

Netball is mindful of all possibilities and one alteration is that the quadrennial World Cup is going biennial from next year.

But the campaign for inclusion in the 2032 Olympics is also gathering pace, with a decision expected soon.

"Achieving Olympic inclusion would be a very important moment in the sport's history," said Dame Liz, a former Wales netball international who was UK Sport CEO from 2010 to 2019.

She believes the knock-on effects of netball getting the nod from the IOC could "future-proof it for the generations to come".

"To be in the Olympics is an ambition for every athlete and, if ever there is a chance, it is now," she said.

"We must demonstrate strong governance, global reach, compelling events and alignment with the Olympic movement's priorities.

"We believe netball has a very strong case and can make a meaningful contribution to Brisbane 2032."

From two waste paper bins and a ball in a Kent college to the Olympic stage?

Tack, Madame Osterberg.