It is a sport millions played at school without ever grasping its quietly radical origins. Yet netball, once dismissed as a gentle pastime, was forged in an environment of feminist defiance and scientific ambition — and its leaders now have their sights set on the biggest stage of all: the Olympic Games.
With Glasgow set to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games and doubts clouding that event's long-term viability, netball's governing body is campaigning for inclusion at Brisbane 2032. A decision is expected soon, and the stakes could hardly be higher for a sport that has spent more than a century scuffling for attention, respect and a worthy platform.
A Swedish Pioneer and a Kent Lawn
The woman behind netball's arrival in England was Martina Bergman Osterberg, a Swedish suffragist and liberal powerhouse who ran a physical education college in Dartford. A disciple of the anatomy-based, apparatus-free Swedish gymnastics system, Osterberg set out to build what a 1900 magazine described as "physically perfect women," training students in anatomy, physiology, hygiene, massage and the theory of movement.
Osterberg caught wind of James Naismith's invention of basketball in 1891 — possibly during an 1893 trip to Chicago — and brought the concept back to England. By the summer of 1895, students at her Dartford college were lobbing small balls into waste paper baskets perched on poles on the lawn. The sport initially shared the name basketball before evolving into something distinct. Goals replaced points, dribbling was outlawed, and rings with nets eventually replaced the bins. Elements were also borrowed from a women's version of basketball that featured player zone restrictions.
The first formal rules were established in 1901, by which point Australia and New Zealand had already embraced the game. Originally played nine-a-side, the sport was not globally standardised to seven-a-side until 1960. The Netball World Cup launched in 1963 and has been contested every four years since.
Corsets, Gymslips and Quiet Emancipation
Osterberg was a fiercely radical figure who demolished the notion that men were best suited to train women. She dismissed rival teaching methods and convinced head teachers that her graduates were essential to running their physical education programmes. A magazine account from 1897 admiringly described her students, typically in their late teens, as "teachers in embryo... destined high priestesses of a new cult."
The college was also where the gymslip — the no-frills sportswear staple for girls across much of the 20th century — was invented by Osterberg's superintendent Mary Tait. Corsets were immediately banished. Netball historian Dr Margaret Henley, a lecturer at the University of Auckland, told BBC Sport that removing the corset and wearing a gym tunic was "an incredibly liberating moment."
Students committed to strict diets, abstained from alcohol and followed early-to-bed policies. Upon graduating, many took the novel sport with them and taught it to their own pupils, spreading netball across the country and eventually the world.
Henley's research, supported by a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Grant, has explored netball's role in women's health and wellbeing. She describes the sport as "a misunderstood hotbed of feminist advancement" that carefully disguised its purposes. Through netball, women found leadership, management and financial skills at a time when they were largely confined to domestic roles.
"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. "Women are the benchmark of how the game is played."
The Professional Era and a Global Footprint
Osterberg died of cancer in 1915, aged 65, and gifted her college to the English nation. England Netball formed in 1926, making 2026 its centenary year. The Dartford college trained teachers in various guises until the 1980s, and its main house, Kingsfield, was being converted into apartments in 2026.