We need to see our Sovereigns in action in Ballarat.

Instead we are forced to wait. Again. A frustrating prospect at such a prime time for the sport.

Netball has long been the top team participation sport for women and girls in this nation.

The sport is in a prime boom period, headlined by the new Super Netball league delivering a record-breaking pay deal for Australian female athletes and a broadcast deal making the game far more accessible to a general sporting audience.

Netball’s shortened Fast5 format is injects hype in showmanship. Junior program NetSetGO is driving up junior participation rates, as confirmed by Australian Sports Commission data in December.

But we will only see this region’s marquee netball team twice this season.

This is a debate dating back more than a decade for Ballarat in past state league netball forms. It is incredible this remains a sticking point, particularly at a time when the sport is flying.

Sovereigns launched their new Victorian Netball League campaign on Wednesday night. 

Ballarat crowds will not have a chance to see them until early June, then again at the end of July. Both fixtures clash with South East Australian Basketball League games, including a Miners-Rush blockbuster against arch-rival Geelong.

Sovereigns have retained strong talent from across western Victoria, including in championship division, and have impressive headline recruits in two former Australian Diamonds Demelza Fellowes and Renae Ingles. The latter will join Sovereigns fresh off the Super Netball circuit with Adelaide Thunderbirds.

Yet Sovereigns will predominantly play mid-week, late night clashes at the State Netball Hockey Centre.

Try as we might to follow them, Sovereigns feel like a missing piece to Ballarat’s sporting landscape.

Our top football, basketball and soccer teams each regularly play to Ballarat crowds.

It is hard to gauge what Sovereigns are putting out on court. It is hard to really understand the increased intensity, skill and aerial display demanded of our player.

Unless we see them more often.

Ballarat has a passionate netball base but has the potential to tap further into this region’s broader sporting network if it can establish a greater presence here.

It makes the pathways and possibilities a little more real for juniors in the ranks and has greater potential to inspire more young girls to get involved in sport, if not in netball.

But we have to see to believe.

Netball has had to evolve to stay at the top its participation game for women, now more than ever in a rapidly changing era for elite women’s sport in Australia.

Surely it must be time for the VNL to venture a little further from the State Netball Hockey Centre into regional Victoria. Super Netball is re-energising the sport, grassroots games are strong but the steps in between must be more tangible if netball is to stay top in women’s sport.