Sunday 2 March – Let's go, Swifts!

Current location: Sydney Olympic Park
11.11am, Wandering around the Olympic Park, looking for the Sports Centre. This is quite hard to do when there are loads of venues, all with very similar-sounding names, such as 'Sports Hall', 'Activity Centre', 'Sports Arena' and all you want is the unique 'Sports Centre'. Eventually we (Rianne and I) found it, and joined the giant queue to pick up our membership packs. Because this netball season, Rianne and I have decided to support the NSW Swifts in the National Championships, so we've become members and today is the first day of the championship season. The Swifts are playing West Coast Fever (who are from Perth, so I should have some loyalty, really, but I'm Swifts until I die now!).

It was so good to watch netball live. I've only watched professional teams once before, when we saw England taking the series win from Australia, more than a year ago. In England, if you support a football team, you can watch matches on TV, go to watch your team live, read about them in the news. There's none of that for netball. There aren't really opportunities to support a team, because matches are never televised (occasionally international ones are) and there just isn't the publicity around netball. But in Australia, it's the opposite. People have a favourite team, can go to matches, support them, meet them, and get really involved. Today, for example, there were thousands of people on the first day of the championship, watching two state teams battle it out against each other, and cheering and gasping and whooping and booing, and generally embracing the atmosphere and culture of the sport. Just how it should be!

So, the Swifts have had a shocking few seasons, but have a few new cracking players and are considered a team to watch this season. They started strong, but were losing by a few goals (seven goals, at one point), up until three-quarter time, when the score was even. With an amaaaazing final quarter, which saw Swifts scoring six out of the seven first goals scored, they ended up winning 54-51. So proud, and so excited to watch them again!