T&T se­nior women’s team net­baller Saman­tha Wal­lace says she is de­light­ed with the news that the Aus­tralian Sun­corp Su­per Net­ball League sea­son will get go­ing on Au­gust 1 with the league com­mit­ted to com­plet­ing a full 60-match sea­son.

The sea­son was due to start with the Wal­lace’s New South Wales Swifts, the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons and Sun­shine Coast Light­ning meet­ing on May 2 in a re­match of last year’s fi­nal. How­ev­er, due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic which took the world by storm in mid-March, the league was forced to post­poned its start.

But, last Sun­day in a me­dia re­lease, Sun­corp Su­per Net­ball Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Chris Syming­ton con­firmed that the sea­son will get go­ing on Au­gust 1.

While the fix­ture for the sea­son is still be­ing fi­nalised, the con­firmed sea­son start date means teams have been giv­en the green light to be­gin group train­ing to­geth­er, with­in the gov­ern­ment guide­lines in each state, from Mon­day.

The clubs have al­so agreed to train­ing guide­lines to en­sure com­pet­i­tive bal­ance, as well as the health and safe­ty of all ath­letes and staff.

The re­lease added: In ad­di­tion, start­ing yes­ter­day (June 1), play­ers will con­tin­ue to be paid in line with the cur­rent agree­ment of 12 hours per week, with full pre-sea­son train­ing cur­rent­ly ear­marked for late June where ath­letes will re­turn to their nor­mal 23 hours of train­ing a week.

Com­ment­ing on the an­nounce­ment, the 26-year-old To­co-born Wal­lace who cap­tured the “Most Valu­able Play­er” Fi­nals award af­ter lead­ing the Swifts past Light­ning in the fi­nal in Sep­tem­ber, at the Bris­bane En­ter­tain­ment Cen­tre said she was feel­ing ex­treme­ly ex­cit­ed about the sea­son kick­ing off.

Wal­lace, who end­ed the 2019 cam­paign with 648 goals from 695 at­tempts for the sec­ond spot be­hind Ja­maican Jhaniele Fowler 709/753, said, “The late start means that the sea­son will al­so have a lat­er than usu­al fin­ish but I’m just hap­py to ac­tu­al­ly get a sea­son in af­ter all the un­cer­tain­ties due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.”

A win­ner of the “Play­er of the Year” in the Eng­lish Vi­tal­i­ty Net­ball Su­per League in 2016, Wal­lace, who has a three-year Sun­corp League ca­reer tal­ly of 1,580 goals from 1,739 at­tempts not­ed that her en­tire team was al­so anx­ious­ly look­ing for­ward to start­ing the de­fence of their ti­tle.

“My team-mates are thrilled and we just can’t wait to see each oth­er this week back on the court in full gears rather than on zoom,” said Wal­lace who not­ed that while the sea­son has been giv­en the thumbs up, she was al­so hope­ful of the re­stric­tions placed on crowds will al­so be lift­ed by the time the match­es get un­der­way.

“As you know our crowd sup­port is a big part of our game as they give us the added push when things get tough to get over the fin­ish line, and not hav­ing them at the venue will be sad, so I’m hop­ing by the time we’re ready to play the re­stric­tions will be lift­ed so we can have crowds at our games.”

Syming­ton said the sea­son start rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward on the road to get­ting back on the court.

“We’re thrilled that a sea­son start date has been locked away, now all our stake­hold­ers have a date to work to­wards and fans can start to get ex­cit­ed for the start of the sea­son. We are plan­ning to play out a full home and away sea­son, and we are con­fi­dent that our start date gives us the best op­por­tu­ni­ty to achieve that,” he said.

“Our guid­ing prin­ci­ples through­out this process have nev­er changed, those be­ing the health and well­be­ing of the com­mu­ni­ty along­side the fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty of our sport. There has been a col­lec­tive com­mit­ment to those prin­ci­ples from the whole sys­tem in­clud­ing play­ers, teams, part­ners and broad­cast­ers and we will con­tin­ue to take that ap­proach as we look to get our sea­son un­der­way.”

Over in New Zealand, the T&T-based duo, Kali­fa Mc Collin and Daystar Swift, will re­sume their ANZ Pre­mier­ship sea­son on June 19 af­ter it was halt­ed fol­low­ing one round of match­es in March.