Captain's Blog

England captain Amanda Newton looks back on an amazing year and picks out her personal highlights - plus the odd lowlight.

As Christmas approaches, it's time to look back on an amazing year for me and for England Netball - full of highs and lows and lots of great memories. World Championships It has to be said that New Zealand hosted a fantastic event - no corners went unturned! What better place could the World Championships been held in than in the home of netball, New Zealand? Auckland had only nine months to organise the tournament after the coup in Fiji meant that the venue had to be changed. The organisers had secured many sponsors, including New World Supermarkets, who did all sorts of promotions both in store and on tv and radio - wherever you looked there were advertisements for the netball! The Trusts Stadium, where the competition was staged, seats 8,000 people and by the quarter-finals there was not a seat in sight. And spectators weren't only entertained by the netball - the organisers had arranged some amazing live music bands between games and there were free giveaways at quarter and half time breaks to keep the crowd shouting and screaming. All the matches were televised and repeated and there were regular updated highlights too; television viewers just could not miss the netball. The media in New Zealand really supports netball and there were loads of newspaper articles about it as well. In order to make things work smoothly, lots of volunteers had been recruited to help to stage this event. Doug our bus driver was one of them, and he'd taken two weeks off work and was always ready at a drop of a hat to take us where we needed to go. He really was the most amazing man - nothing was too much trouble for him, and he said he'd adopt all of us! Finishing Fourth We were very lucky - lots of England fans made the effort to come to New Zealand to support us, and they were always dressed in red and white, with flags and cheering at the top of their voices. We all really enjoyed the atmosphere - our team cohesion was great, we were all very confident in coming into this competition and had a really good chance of doing well. We trained hard, all of our games prior to the tournament were good, we were in the best possible position any team could have dreamt of. And then we finished fourth - this just wasn't part of the plan. Gutted is the only word that comes to mind, I still feel sick talking about it but maybe it wasn't our time. In the next four years the team will be more experienced and know better what it takes to be contenders for gold! The Co-operative Netball Superleague The league is now in full swing and the England squad will be returning to their sides after Christmas. However, without them, there have been some great matches, some of which have been really close and it's great to see a new name - Team Northumbria - at the top of the league. The competition is going from strength to strength which is good for English Netball and it's going to be fierce after Christmas as everyone tries to make the play-offs in March. Its great to see some new coaching staff coming through - and the competition has also attracted Australian, Jamaican and New Zealand players as well as some former England stars who will give the current crop of England players a run for their money! Make sure you try to watch some of the games live or tune into Sky Sports for highlights. Meanwhile, it only remains for me to thank everyone for their support over the past year, and to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! Here's to even more success in 2008!