A ‘new’ sport: how the UAE fell in love with netball

When Tanya Bertoldi and her husband Anthony told their children they were moving to the United Arab Emirates, their then eight-year-old daughter had only one question, "do they have netball?".

After playing two seasons of netball, young Georgia was hooked on the game, and innocently, her mother promised she could still play once they arrived in Abu Dhabi.

"She wasn't a particularly athletic kid, she tried basketball and a couple of other things but netball she really, really enjoyed," Bertoldi said.

"So when we were having the little family discussion about moving to Abu Dhabi, she said, 'mum, do they have netball? I'm not going if they don't have netball,' and I said of course they have netball, it's on the school website."

Tanya Bertoldi is now working for Netball NSW and as the president of Wagga Netball Association Incorporated. Picture by Madeline Begley

Once the family arrived in Abu Dhabi though, there was no netball to be seen.

Soon Bertoldi was unknowingly spearheading the development of netball in the country.

"We arrived, and signing them all up for their activities, there was no netball," Bertoldi said.

"I went and had a chat with the head of the sports department and asked him, was there something I'm missing, he was British and he said 'oh, that's very, very typical of an Australian mum,' and no, they didn't have netball at that moment."

Georgia Bertoldi (left) wanted to play netball in Abu Dhabi, pictured with parents Anthony and Tanya, and brother Cameron. Picture supplied

In just a ten minute conversation Bertoldi went from wanting to sign her daughter up for the sport, to running the school's netball program.

She quickly got to work putting up posters around the school and giving short presentations to classes about the sport.

In her first session, Bertoldi had nine girls attend, ranging in age from six to 12.

There was one obstacle she hadn't considered though. This was an international school, these children were expats.

"They were Aussies, British kids, a couple of South Africans, so I thought brilliant, we can play netball, not realising of course these were expat kids who had never even seen the game," she said.

"It was really, really grassroots. I was starting from scratch."

With no coaching accreditation, and no experience in sport governance, Bertoldi was stepping into the unknown.

As the term went on, more and more children started to attend the sessions and soon she had enough players to enter the Abu Dhabi International School Sports Association (ADISSA) netball competition.

Other international schools in the region had been forming their own teams, and Bertoldi was aware of a thriving school competition in neighbouring emirate Dubai.

"At the end of two years, it was the biggest sport in the school for girls, I recruited all these coaches and we ran the school netball, but we still didn't have any representation at ADISSA," she said.

Most of the players in the Raha International School netball team were first coached by Tanya Bertoldi. Picture supplied

So, as she'd done two years ago, she volunteered to be the school's representative to the association.

While the school competition was thriving, no matter how much Bertoldi grew the sport in her expat community, getting locals to participate remained a challenge.

"We had a couple of local girls that that joined, not a lot," Bertoldi said.

"In the younger years we did have a few, the parents loved it, they loved seeing it all happening, but once the girls pretty much reached puberty, that's the time that they come out of sports," Bertoldi said.

This was the first time cultural norms had impacted Bertoldi's drive to increase netball participation, and it would be the start of the long effort to get netball to the national level.

Across in Dubai, a similar sporting revolution was occurring.

In both emirates, competitions were growing and local weekend netball academies were popping up, supporting girls to hone their talents.

With no pathway for these talented athletes beyond the school competitions, a national team was the next logical step, but first the sport needed to gain entry to a Sports Council.

It didn't matter if the sport was entered into the Abu Dhabi or Dubai Sports Council, but it needed to be signed off, federated, by the council to develop a national team, and the netball community needed to prove the sport was national.

"They said, this can't be Abu Dhabi or Dubai, it needs to represent all the emirates," Bertoldi said.

For the next two years Bertoldi, and her colleagues in Dubai, vyed for support from high profile businessmen and royal family members to join the Sports Council.

Bertoldi was determined. She started developing local competitions for girls, played in culturally appropriate environments, and people were eating them up.

"We were able to set up some tournaments from the ground up. The tournaments had to be played in enclosed rooms, with any windows blacked out but the girls went crazy for it," she said.

"Honestly, I was sitting there one tournament, it was the final between these two local schools, and you would have thought you were in the MCG. They just loved it."

But there was one, glaring problem.

Tanya Bertoldi and her family returned to Australia in 2020. Picture supplied

"The Sports Council had no idea what the sport was. And when they looked up netball, and saw what the netballers wear, it was everything against what their culture represents," Bertoldi said.

As the sport grew in popularity locally, parents and schools began to write to the government in support of netball and its importance to their children.

Reassuring the Abu Dhabi Sports Council national players would wear long shirts and tights under their playing dresses was an important moment for the game.

"That was the slight opening of the door, that's when they went oh, okay, we can probably talk about this now," she said.

A fair request from the government, Bertolid said the national team should reflect their country and netballers in short, sleeveless dresses did not do that.

"They were totally right, as he said, 'this is not UAE, how can you call this UAE?'" she said.

"He was totally correct."

With the support of an Abu Dhabi council member, Bertoldi was forced to step back and let him fight for the sports inclusion in the council with other members. The future of UAE netball was out of her hands.

"He worked very hard on our behalf," she said.

After seven years of fighting to bring netball to the Emirati community, Bertoldi was faced with a harsh reality, as an expat, she wouldn't be able to serve on the board.

United Arab Emirates national under 17s netball management team: primary carer Jac Eley, team manager Tanya Bertoldi, assistant coach Susanne Skelding, and head coach Deb Jones. Picture supplied

"It was difficult to hear him say, if we do this you understand the board will have to be made up of nationals, a federation can't be run by expats," she said.

"Of course we said that's fine, we'll be the working committee, if that's the way it has to be, that's the way it has to be."

Equally important was finding an Emerati woman to lead the board. While he was incredibly supportive of the growth of the sport across the UAE, he knew it was a women's sport, and they needed to be at the forefront.

Meanwhile, the netball associations in Abu Dhabi and Dubai were going on with business as usual, training up their best players at weekend academies, working with international netball organisations to secure coaching and umpiring accreditation, and taking netball to schools across the Emirates.

At this time, the UAE Netball working committee was granted an 'internship' under the Dubai Sports Council within the Basketball Federation.

All the while, the UAE Netball working committee had been looped out of the conversations occurring behind closed doors.

"Most of these meetings were in Arabic, so we had someone present, but we had no involvement in the discussion," she said.

United Arab Emirates national team players coached Emirati girls at a Netball Development Program in Abu Dhabi schools. Picture supplied

It was through this internship that the working group formed the UAE national netball team, to enter the European Championships. The hard work had paid off, the UAE would be recognised in international competition.

And it was the perfect introduction for the UAE to the international netball community from their under 17s side.

"It was the first time the UAE had been introduced internationally and we absolutely blitzed it," Bertoldi said.

"We won the challenge category, which put us into the championship category for the next championships."

The national opens team soon competed too, and after their second competition, received their first world ranking.

"It was amazing. Just amazing, we were very, very proud," Bertoldi said.

After plenty of setbacks, confusions with the UAE government, and some "scary, nerve wracking" experiences, UAE had a national netball team.

The United Arab Emirates national under 17s team, 2019 Europe Netball Challenge Champions. Picture supplied

Five years later, the UAE is a regular competitor on the international netball circuit, ranked 28 in the world rankings released on November 22, 2022.

Despite the happy ending, Bertoldi said she never thought she'd spend nearly a decade working meticulously in a foreign country to develop the game her daughter so desperately wanted to play.

"It was hard because we kept being ecstatic for what we had achieved for the country, on behalf of the country, but the goal posts kept being moved further and further," she said.

"There were a lot of political sensitivities, cultural sensitivities. There were lots of hurdles and challenges for sure, it was a massive learning curve. Massive."

Just as the skies were clearing for netball in the UAE, with the country preparing to host their first international competition, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and Bertoldi and her family returned to Australia.

"COVID-19 came and shut down all negotiations and meetings (to host international competitions), but my colleagues kept fighting, kept pushing for every opportunity," she said.

"They're there now. They've had it signed off by the government, they're looking forward to getting funding and they're doing it, and all above board, all legitimately, and very well. They're doing it very well."

Watching from afar now, Bertoldi still gets goosebumps thinking about her work in the UAE.

Tanya Bertoldi was one of the United Arab Emirates delegates at the 2019 Netball World Cup Congress. Picture supplied

"I also still get shudders at some of the stuff we went through, as a group," she said.

"What really gets me is so excited though, was going into those national schools and watching the girls come in covered from head to toe, disappearing into the toilets and then coming out with in a netball and playing and cheering."

Netball UAE was federated, and received official admittance to the Abu Dhabi Sports Council, in May 2022, 10 years after Bertoldi and her family first landed in the country.

As of 2022, the UAE has officially added netball to their national school curriculum.

When Bertoldi first arrived in Abu Dhabi, there was just one store in the country that sold netball equipment.

In November 2022, their national under 17s team won the European Championships, while their open team were runners up, quite the turn around from a country that had never heard of netball before.

Since returning to Australia, Bertoldi has taken a role as a development officer with Netball NSW, and was recently elected president of the Wagga Wagga Netball Association.

Originally published in The Daily Advertiser. Thumbnail picture by Madeline Begley for The Daily Advertiser.