New club and new rolling substitutes rule introduced for Katanning Netball Association 2023 season

The winter season for the Katanning Netball Association started on Saturday, with both juniors and seniors playing in Katanning and Kojonup.

The Katanning Leisure Centre was a bubble of bright colours, laughter and determination.

From the moment the whistle went for juniors, netball season officially kicked off with cheering and praise from a well packed grandstand of supporters and it continued throughout the day.

Juniors were raring to go with some new faces and others having played previously and there was great encouragement all round.

Katanning teams played in Katanning while Kojonup held their derby round at home as a part of their winter sports carnival.

At noon a training session was held for the Katanning teams participating in the NetSet Carnival at Kojonup on Sunday, May 7.

Seniors felt like a fresh turnaround for 2023 with a lot of returning players mixed among clubs and giving teams a shake up.

Katanning has welcomed a new club to take part in the senior competition, originally a solo team over previous years, which has now grown and formed into a club named Te Taitonga.

This has allowed two teams to join both combined divisions.

The senior competition is now trialling rolling substitutions, which has become a new gameplay allowing players to sub on and off while the game is still in play.

This will be a permanent rule in future netball in Australia and round one went well with the new addition.

This season A-grade and A-reserves are combined into one division for nine rounds before JUthen splitting back into separate grades to play finals.

Kojonup 1 didn’t show any mercy to their sister team Kojonup 2, winning 49-29 in the top division, while Olympians 1 dominated against Dumbleyung 1 with a massive 74-19 win.

Allstars 1 came in hard with a whopping 62 goals to beat Cardinals Force with 26.

Te Taitonga 1 managed a maiden win over Broomehill, 45-29.

B-grade and C-grade have joined for nine rounds and also will split back into two separate grades for finals.

Kojonup’s second senior derby was a tough game as Kojonup 3 got the better of Kojonup 4, 37-20.

Olympians 3 had a great win over Cardinals Phoenix, 45-38.

Te Taitonga 2 had the lead but couldn’t hold on as Allstars 3 won 39-36.

Olympians 2 made it a clean sweep for their club, winning 49-22 against Dumbleyung 2.