Tony Smith Piece from the Press

OPINION: Sorry netball fans but it's hard for the general sporting public to get too excited about the Silver Ferns' latest series against Jamaica.

Netball is, undoubtedly, a hugely popular participation sport in New Zealand. But nothing has changed on the international scene for 50 years. Australia and New Zealand retain their stranglehold on world championship and Commonwealth Games titles.

Still essentially a Commonwealth sport, netball has no profile in North America, Asia, South America, Africa and Europe (outside the UK).

Nothing wrong with that, of course. Nor does Australian Rules or American football, both absorbing spectator sports. Rugby union and rugby league also hardly have global followings but they have at least strived to extend their traditional reach.

Jamaica are allegedly ranked third in the world yet the Silver Ferns comfortably beat them by 23 goals in Christchurch this week after struggling in the first quarter.

Trans-Tasman tests can be gripping viewing because they generally have an element lacking in most other netball encounters � a contest.

It's hard for a code with such strict restrictions on court movement and a surfeit of whistleblowing to make too many changes to its basic recipe.

More upsets would help. Genuine sports lovers should look forward to the day when the Silver Ferns and Australia miss medals at the world championships because that will mean the rest of the world will have, finally, caught up. Netball can, truly, be said to have arrived as an international sport then.

Basketball has already arrived. Yet we've only been getting snippets of the Tall Blacks' buildup to next weekend's world championships in Turkey as opposed to live, primetime free-to-air coverage of netball.

That's a massive disappointment given how the Tall Blacks gripped the nation when they finished fourth in the world championship in Indianapolis in 2002 when captain Pero Cameron made the all-star tournament team starting five.

Their games in Turkey will be covered live on Sky. But, unlike the All Whites, whose pre-World Cup games were televised in full, the Tall Blacks have so far slipped under the public's radar.

Basketball is second only to football on the sporting stage in terms of global popularity.

One day, the New Zealand public and media might wake up to the fact.