The final place in the Super Netball semi finals this season came down the last quarter of the last game of the last round. After the Giants took six of a possible eight points against West Coast Fever the previous day, Collingwood needed at least seven points and a winning margin of seven to leapfrog the Giants into fourth place.
And leapfrog they did – emphatically beating the third-placed Vixens to cement their place in the finals series. There is no doubt the excitement created by the bonus points heightened the interest in the game to the very last second. But had the Magpies fallen short and won the game, but only taken six points, they would have missed the finals after recording seven wins, five losses and two draws to the Giants’ seven wins, six losses and one draw.
A similar situation nearly transpired in 2018, when had the Vixens beaten Sunshine Coast Lightning in the final regular season game, they could have finished fifth despite winning more games than the Lightning, who took fourth place.
Both years, the natural order of things prevailed, however, and competition organisers could breathe a sigh of relief.
Unusual methods to decide winners aren’t unique to netball. Cricket Australia brought in bonus points to decide Sheffield Shield finals in order to remove the risk of draws. Under the new system, teams receive 0.01 bonus points for every run scored over 200 in the first 100 overs of each innings and 0.1 points for each wicket.
And the most recent Cricket World Cup is one of the more extreme examples of the format, with England claiming victory in the final due to scoring more boundaries during the game when scores were tied after a super over.
The challenge in these kind of systems is balancing fairness to teams with the excitement factor. Still, Super Netball CEO Chris Symington is happy with the way the competition played out this year.
“The Suncorp Super Netball Commission will review the effectiveness of all rule changes post season and also discuss whether any new changes are required based on any patterns that may have emerged throughout the season,” he said. “We are delighted that for the past two years the finals have been determined by the last quarter of the last match of the year.”
Commentator Bianca Chatfield, speaking on The Inner Circle podcast this week, was another who was full of praise for the system. “I’ve never been more interested in the game while watching as a fan as I was over the weekend, because of the bonus point,” she said. “It was so exciting.”
So far the bonus points saga has been more thriller than tragedy, but there are a number of idiosyncrasies in the current system.
The first is the ability for teams to receive an unequal number of points for a draw. In a drawn game, each team receives two points, however as a bonus point is awarded for each quarter, a team can win three quarters and take five points for the game to the other team’s two. The other major sticking point has been that when a quarter is drawn, neither team receives points.
Collingwood general manager of women’s sport, Jane Woodlands-Thompson, recently raised her concerns about the system, after the Magpies had two different results that ended with the same number of points.
“We didn’t win last week, we win this week,” she posted on Twitter. “We walked away with 5 points (to the opposition’s 3) both games. If we go with the bonus point system then a win should be worth at least 5 points. Thoughts?”
Competitions manager for the Netball Scoop website, Ian Harkin, believes there are some tweaks that could improve the system.
“There is no doubt that bonus points have added interest and excitement to some games, but it has come at the cost of fairness,” he said. “There are so many anomalies with this current system and it’s really more good luck than good management that they haven’t cost a deserving team a position.”
Harkin has looked at several options to improve the system, one of which is awarding 12 points for a win, six points for a draw, two bonus points for winning a quarter and one bonus point for a drawn quarter.
“This is similar to the format used in the new Sapphire Series (state league competition) in Queensland,” said Harkin. “It puts a higher value on wins and draws and all of the points are awarded in each match.”
With no bonus points in play for the finals, teams and fans will need to re-adjust to the old-fashioned style of playing to win the whole game. For some, that might be a bonus.
