Tag: netball

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Bigger is not always better, last weekend’s Beach 5’s were devoid of people and atmosphere while swamped with corporate branding and data-mining promo girls demanding you sign-up for this or that.

Sadly the focus of profit over product meant that on Sunday afternoon beyond the teams and their friends cheering themselves on the event was empty apart from a bank of photographers taking pictures of the beach rugby.

You have to wonder who the Dodgeball people upset, they were stuck out-of-sight on the far-right of the beach behind one of the half empty stands at the end of the rugby field. A shame because they were one of the only sports where the teams dressed up and got into the feel of having fun – yet no-one could see costumes or their games.

The netball women were having lots of fiercely competitive matches, but with the ‘courts’ swung 90 degrees to run end to end instead of side to side as in previous years it was harder to watch multiple games at the same time and teams ended up only watching their game rather than being able to see other play at the same time.

Beach rugby was a fierce and competitive as ever, but the beach football was just boring – probably because the players lacked the skills to keep the ball in the air and tried to play ‘grass’ football style which just left the ball stuck in the sand and groans from the couple of people watching.

In past years teams had their own open-sided tents which worked as not only as places for the teams to relax and leave stuff but also as mini-social centers where friends would gather, talk, eat, drink… These helped set the friendly, social and fun feeling of the whole event. There were none this year, replaced with more sponsors booths, and the atmosphere was… well, sadly there wasn’t any.

The enthusiasm and sporting competitiveness remain, yet the fun and frivolity that made the Beach 5’s so enjoyable in previous years has been subsumed beneath the organisers greed to monetise and profit from the event.

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