Draw Made For 2007 World Netball Championships
The official draw was made by Molly Rhone, President of the International Federation of Netball Associations and Sara Lunam, Chairman of 2007 World Netball Championships Ltd in a live draw at Sky Television Studios in Auckland, the host broadcasters for the event to be staged from 10-17 November.
The 2007 World Netball Championships will comprise teams from 16 countries drawn from Oceania, Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. This is the first World Netball Championships where teams have had to qualify to attend. Previously entry was open to all countries regardless of their ranking.
The five top ranked teams from the 2003 World Championships in Jamaica – world champions New Zealand, runners-up Australia, Jamaica, England and South Africa were given seeded positions based. Fiji was also given a protected place as the original host for the championships.
The winners from each of the five regional tournaments were drawn into their world championship sections first followed by the second qualifiers.
The championships will be shown on both Sky Television and TVNZ. Sky Television, the host broadcaster, will screen 32 games live and TVNZ will broadcast all games involving New Zealand.
World Netball Championship General Manager Jane Patterson said they expect to finalise a full game schedule this month.
“Tickets will go on sale in June after the operational aspects have been finalised and the schedule confirmed by IFNA.”
The championships will be decided over a round robin in each section with the top two teams from each section progressing to quarterfinals, semifinals and final.
The sections for the 12th World Netball Championships are:
Group A: New Zealand, Wales, Malawi, Botswana
Group B: Australia, Trinidad & Tobago, Samoa, Scotland
Group C: Jamaica, Fiji, Singapore, Cook Islands
Group D: England, South Africa, Barbados, Malaysia.