There was chanting on Mersey waterfront. Chanting and stomping of feet.
“Let’s go Thunder, let’s go!” (stomp, stomp). Whisper it though: Thunder are from Manchester. Nevertheless, their Netball Super League clash against Birmingham Panthers at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena (as nobody calls it, notwithstanding a presumably considerable sponsorship outlay) was billed as a home fixture. Thunder, the North West’s only NSL team, are normally based 40-ish miles down the motorway at Belle Vue Leisure Centre near Longsight, and occasionally play at the AO Arena in Manchester. It is testament, therefore, to the work that the NSL are doing to broaden the fan base around the sport that they brought one of the bigger fixtures of the season, against Birmingham Panthers, to Merseyside. And testament to their success in doing so that thousands of people turned up to cheer on a sporting team bearing the name of Liverpool’s great local rival.
In another pleasing twist on the normal run of things, it was the men who were the warm-up act. Thunder’s male team despatched London Giants before the women, who are four-time NSL champions, took to the court accompanied by pyrotechnics and blaring excerpts of, inevitably, Thunderstruck by AC/DC. They were cheered on by an overwhelmingly female crowd, including what felt like every girls’ netball team in the region. ‘Empowering’ might have become a somewhat trite and overused word, but it is quite something to see female athletes hyped and lionised as role models before massed ranks of girls who play the same sport.
Photo credit: Manchester Thunder
And what hype. Elite netball, in which more than 100 goals are regularly scored in the course of an hour-long game, has the same stop-start qualities as American sports like baseball and basketball. NSL has taken lessons from across the pond in how to keep a crowd engaged and, as such, no free moment went unfilled. Indeed, there was almost as much music as there was on-court action. DJs and local singer-songwriters were on hand to fill any potential pre-match or half-time lull, while during the game itself there were snippets of music after every score – pretty much every upbeat pop song of the last 30 years must have made a fleeting appearance. A ‘goal cam’ projected grinning fan faces onto a big screen each time it was Thunder who boosted their tally, while giant bear mascots danced and drummers drummed. Five minutes before the end of each quarter, horns honked to signal ‘Super Shot’ periods during which goals scored from the outer half of the shooting circle counted double.
This innovation, newly introduced into the NSL for this season, contributed to what was a tight match, with Panthers making more consistent use of the opportunity to rack up points during the Super Shot phases. Regular Thunder fans who had expected a repeat of the team’s 30-goal victory in Birmingham earlier this year would have had a nasty shock as, after racing to an early lead, Manchester were held almost to level pegging for much of the second half. Yet in the end it was Thunder, in their Scouse home-away-from-home, who took the win 67 vs 62. Cue more fireworks, more stomping, more music.
It was all a long way from the netball I played as a 90s schoolgirl, shivering on a concrete playground in a frankly inadequate skirt. I am not sure my PE teacher from those days would have approved. But my daughters, and thousands like them who live in a city where men’s football can sometimes feel like the only show in town, certainly did. Let’s go Thunder, let’s go.
Photos, including main image: credit Manchester Thunder
