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SO, the Zimbabwe senior netball team better known as the Gems are back on the game’s radar after a lengthy absence from the international scene.

Zimbabwe’s flagship netball team are in the United Kingdom for a tour that will see them playing 11 matches including the Celtic International Series, which began in Scotland yesterday.

The Celtic Cup International Series is pencilled in for Scotland and Wales from November 1-10.

The tour is divided into two segments starting with a tri-nations world ranking contest running in Glasgow and Cardiff from November 1-6.

Zimbabwe, Scotland, and Wales will battle it out in this meet while the second instalment of the competition will see the Gems, Welsh Feathers, Scottish Thistles, and Northern Ireland Warriors facing off for the Celtic Cup in Glasgow from November 7-10.

This will be Zimbabwe’s first international tournament outside Africa, aside from the World Cup.

As such, we call upon the Zimbabwe Netball Association (ZINA) to make the most of this rare tour and use it as a turning point in the senior team’s fortunes.

The UK tour is a welcome return to the international game for a Zimbabwe team that is so long on potential but often comes so short on delivery.

This is because while the country boasts of a host of talented netball players but ZINA president Leticia Chipandu and her leadership have not done enough to market the Gems brand so that it can scale the heights which its potential richly deserve.

That this is only the first time that the Gems are travelling out of Africa for a netball assignment that is not a World Cup speaks to the glaring lack of aggressive marketing on the part of ZINA.

While coach Ropafadzo Mutsauki and his charges have been working hard on the court, it is incumbent on the administrators to also play ball and on the commercial side of things.

Fellow top African netball sides Malawi, South Africa and Uganda regularly play against high-profile teams and keep their players regularly exposed to the kind of netball they will face on the World Cup stage.

At the end of their Celtic Cup sojourn in Glasgow, the Gems, as we reported earlier in this publication, have been invited for a rare international friendly clash against global netball giants England in Manchester.

In fact, England are the world’s second-best team playing against them will give the Gems and even their coach invaluable experience.

Just five years ago, the Gems were in Liverpool where they left a huge mark with an impressive run on their maiden appearance at the Netball World Cup.

Sadly, the team was forgotten about just months after their return from the World Cup where they claimed an eighth-place finish.

With some strategic and aggressive marketing, captain Felistas Kwangwa and her troops should turn into high-profile personalities, riding on the crest of their fine World Cup run.

Some of the Gems’ top players could have flooded advertising billboards, while ZINA should have used the World Cup experience to enter into varying synergies with fellow netball associations from around the world.

ZINA and all in the sporting fraternity need to understand and note that the World Cup cycles are a process and not a once off event and thus require careful planning.

It was saddening that ZINA as the netball mother body appear to have gone to sleep after Liverpool 2019 and only awoke from their slumber when the Gems once again did well to qualify for the 2023 World Cup which was staged in Cape Town, South Africa between July and August.

Now local netball has been afforded a good chance to use the latest tour to the UK to relaunch the Gems brand and stitch some deals that could also promote sport tourism into the country.

Cricket and rugby have successfully done well to get teams visiting the country and netball could take a leaf from that.

We believe that for netball to reach high growth levels, ZINA must start by respecting the national team players as at.

Claims that national team players were only paid $50 each while on tour at the African Championships in Botswana made very reading.

The corporate partners would also need to be all-weather friends instead of waiting to only jump onto the bandwagon only when the team has secured a World Cup ticket.

Financial institution Nedbank must be applauded for standing by the Gems and more such partners can turn netball into one of the country’s top sports, which it deserves.

Lack of proper sponsorship for netball clubs has resultantly put undue pressure on the limited resources at the disposal of the national association.

That some clubs in the Premier Netball League still fail to fulfil fixtures for lack of resources while others such as Waterfalls have since disbanded before even the PNL season has ended.

Teams like Platinum Queens and Ngezi Platinum Queens, who relied on the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) budgets of their parent companies have also not spared and have since folded.

To their credit the players in many clubs have continued to netball out of passion even when there is no salary coming. But the exposure that comes with the UK tour and many more which ZINA need to organise could also help players secure contracts at professional clubs based outside of the country.

Kwangwa showed the way when she was signed by a British club Surrey Storm after the World CU and more players could follow suit.