They shouldn’t.
And that’s why Jenni McCluskey is campaigning for the roots of masters netball to be sown into Shepparton’s sporting scene.
McCluskey, who boasts an extensive netball career in playing and coaching, has an idea to launch a mature-age league in the Goulburn Valley where retired players can toss the ball around in a friendly atmosphere again.
But she can’t do it all on her own.
McCluskey is in the investigation stage of the project and has floated it to a select few to a resounding affirmative response, yet by self-admission, she doesn’t know how to get a fledgling competition off the ground.
“I want to get the feelers out there to see if there’s any interest in starting a masters netball competition,” she said.
“It can be aligned with the masters football club in that it could be like one training session every fortnight on the off week and we play every second Sunday or something like that — they’re just the legalities, I don’t know.”
McCluskey admits the competition doesn’t have to be uber-competitive.
However, the real motivation behind starting the masters league is getting women whose netball careers have ended back on the court again.
“As we get older, it’s really hard to compete against younger people; your bodies change as you get older,” she said.
“If you’re playing against women, we’re going to tend to look after our bodies a bit more and won’t go up as hard and all that kind of stuff.
“I don’t think just because we get older that we have to stop playing and sport, exercise and movement is probably better for us.
“There’s just no platform for us to do those kinds of things if netball or basketball is our form of exercise.
“It’s good for your physical health, it’s good for mental health and it’s great for keeping up socialising as well.”
McCluskey would know as well as anyone about an appetite for a masters netball league in the wider Goulburn Valley region.
She had a lengthy playing tenure in the region and went on to coach at the likes of Mooroopna, Euroa, Shepparton East and Murchison-Toolamba, racking up a big contact book from her time on the court.
The ex-mentor has also played netball in the Australian Masters Games in Adelaide and the Alice Springs Masters Games.
But when it comes to competition on her back door, McCluskey summed up the situation succinctly.
“There’s nothing,” she said.
“I spoke to a couple of the masters footballers and they all still want to have a run, but they also don’t want to be exposed to the competitiveness and physicality of normal football. And it’s the same as netball.
“You don’t need that many women to make up a side, so you can have sides from multiple towns.
“I just think it’s a fantastic idea if people still want to play netball as they get older.
“I’ve mentioned it to a few people over the last couple of weeks and (they say) ‘count me in’.”
McCluskey noted that her next step was to contact different leagues in the area and pitch the idea to the organisations' operation management arms.
Approaching Netball Victoria is also on the cards.
In the meantime, she is urging others who may have backgrounds in league development/management to step forward as well as potential players who are interested in getting this diamond of an idea polished and ready for display.
“I actually have no idea how to start a league and what’s involved,” she said.
“So people that may have been involved with other clubs before and may have initiated something like that, if there is an interest, is it something we can get up and running?”
Anyone wishing to help get the masters netball initiative off the the ground can reach out to McCluskey at jenni.mccluskey@hotmail.com
