Before 2008, the major competitions in international netball were the Netball World Championships and the netball event of the Commonwealth Games, both held every four years. First-tier national teams also participated in yearly test series, with others playing in regional events. However, several significant changes in international netball occurred in 2008. Changes to international test rules were finalised at an International Federation of Netball Associations congress in Auckland in 2007, and progressively rolled out across netball-playing countries the following year. The IFNA also introduced a new world rankings system to compare the performances of national teams. In England, a campaign was started advocating netball's inclusion in the Olympic Games, as a demonstration sport in 2012 and potentially as a competitive sport from 2016. In the Southern Hemisphere, the sport attained semi-professional status in Australia and New Zealand with the introduction of the ANZ Championship. Also, in December 2008 a new international netball competition was announced, the World Netball Series, to be contested in 2009 under modified rules. The new rules had been trialled by England junior and senior squads over a 12-month period. DVDs were sent to coaches of the participating teams for consultation. Some of the new rules were announced in December 2008, including six-minute playing quarters and power plays; others were announced in February 2009. Prior to the 2012 edition the rules were revamped and renamed Fast5.
Format
The competition is held over three days, and is played under Fast5 rules. Each team plays each other once during the first two days in a round-robin format. The four highest-scoring teams from this stage progress to the finals, played on the final day of competition, in which the 1st-ranked team plays the 4th-ranked team, while 2nd plays 3rd. The winners of these two matches contest the Grand Final; the remaining teams contest the third- and fifth-place playoffs.
Venues
The first three editions of the tournament were held in England. Initially, Manchester was to host all three seasons in England at the MEN Arena. The venue is the largest indoor arena in Europe, capable of seating around 20,000 spectators. However, the 2010 tournament was held in Liverpool at the Echo Arena, as wasthe 2011 tournament.
Australian coach Norma Plummer greeted the new tournament positively: "If you want your sport to keep growing these days, it's got to become up with the times and keep having innovations that make the game exciting for not only the players, but all the spectators." But Plummer also expressed some reservations about power plays being used against substantially weaker teams, and also about penalty shootouts and the new centre pass rule. Netball New ZealandChief ExecutiveRaelene Castle stated that she was "excited about what the new competition could bring to the ever-increasing profile of Netball internationally". However, Castle also acknowledged that the shortened version of the game "may not be for everyone". New Zealand netball and basketball player Donna Wilkins also stated her concerns about the sport becoming too similar to basketball.
