Super Netball sets tough precedent for COVID-impacted teams, clarifies rules around borrowing players

Last week, the Giants netball club could have been forgiven for thinking one of their staff members had broken a mirror, walked under a ladder or crossed paths with a black cat.

Heading into round two of the Super Netball season, their team was decimated by COVID-19, with six players testing positive ahead of their clash against the Adelaide Thunderbirds.

Unfortunately, it appears bad luck does come in threes, as three members of their contracted playing group were among those infected: Amy Parmenter, Jamie-Lee Price and Sophie Dwyer. The rest were Giants training partners: Jemma Donoghue, Natalie Sligar and Eliza Burton.

On top of that, the club were still waiting for two more of their contracted players, Amy Sligar and Lauren Moore, to be medically cleared to re-join the team, after being scratched from the opening round for the same reason and unable to attend training during the week.

This left the Giants with just five full-time contracted players and five uncapped training partners available to make up their game-day squad of 10 (with some being managed for injury).

And yet two appeals they made to postpone the match were denied by the Super Netball league.

Prior to the season's start, the competition announced a new COVID-19 contingency framework that aimed to keep the season alive and provide support to impacted teams in 2022.

This included an option for clubs to request to reschedule a match if five or more of their top 10 contracted players had contracted the virus, or if three players from the one position had been infected.

Based on these guidelines, the Giants qualified on both accounts, considering Parmenter, Price, Dwyer, Amy Sligar and Moore are all part of their game-day 10, and Parmenter, Price and Sligar each