Job description: part-time. Wednesday nights, mostly, but opportunities for higher duties on weekends. Best seat in the house. Essential work (at least in netball terms). A modest payment for your trouble. All ages welcome.
The latter is a good thing for Marcus Bailey who, at just 17, is the youngest bench official in the VNL, with a CV that already includes a handful of Suncorp Super Netball games since he gained his national accreditation earlier this year.
Marcus is an aspiring law student completing Year 12 at Salesian College, Sunbury. He grew up around netball, with mum Kim - the former Coach and Umpire Manager at Netball Victoria, now Netball Australia's Workforce Development Manager - having also been a VNL coach.
“Mum said ‘why don’t you come and be a bench official? You’re not doing anything on Wednesday nights?’, so I was like ‘OK, I’ll do that in VNL’, and now I’ve slowly moved up, and I’m doing SSN,'' Marcus says. "Mum’s not coaching now, and I’m still going.’’
Netball Victoria president Kirrily Zimmerman is on the more, ahem, experienced end of the bench official scale. And happy to see “a very smart, very switched-on young man” not just doing so well but lowering the average age on the official bench. Quite substantially.
This netball role is less visible than others such as playing, coaching or umpiring, but just as important. There is still a pathway, too: state accreditation for those interested in more than scoring by necessity for their child’s team; national level, potentially, after that.
Qualities? “You need to be able to concentrate for 15 minute blocks, that’s the main issue, and attention to detail,’’ says Zimmerman, noting the phasing out of paper score sheets, in favour of an all-digital system.
“It’s actually quite well designed for the youth, who are very technologically savvy. Marcus has just slotted in very nicely, because he just clicks, clicks, clicks.’’
At VNL’s 19/U level, the duties are scoring and timing, while in Championship grade, an extra person is needed to oversee that new addition: rolling subs. In SSN, there are extra arena screens to consider, too. (Note: at the more old-school international level, where paper is still a thing, the bench staff expands to four.)
“Pretty much all it is is a bunch of buttons; you’ve just got to know when to do everything, and where everything is, and then once you’ve got that down-pat you’re pretty much all good,’’ says Marcus, who also nominates communication as an important skill, and would surely have progressed even further and faster if not for Covid-19 sucking games out of Melbourne and sending them interstate.
As to where it will lead, given that Zimmerman worked at both the 2015 Netball World Cup in Sydney and the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, and local bench officials will be needed when Australia hosts the 2027 NWC, the teenager says: “If I could get there I’d be happy to do it!
“At the moment I’m just happy doing it casually and getting a bit of pocket money. I don’t know where it will take me, honestly. I’m excited about it, and it’s great just to go there; it’s a great group of people and everything, but it doesn’t really feel like a ‘job’, as such, so that makes it a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable.’’
Mum Kim is amused at times to see Marcus taking his seat among the older bench staff on game day/night, yet encouraged by his presence, too, for several reasons.
“I think he’s been a bit of a breath of fresh air; everyone loves working with him, and I think he’s inspired a couple of the others, actually,’’ she says. “They’ve said to me ‘oh, Marcus is in 'national' now, how do I get there?’ And ‘how did he get there, before us?’. So hopefully we might get a few more (officials) out of it.’’
As far as part-time jobs go, there’s plenty to commend this one. “If you can’t play for the Vixens and you can’t umpire or coach, it’s actually quite a nice way to be involved at an elite level,’’ says Zimmerman, before a final job endorsement: “You can’t have a game without them, and it’s the best seat in the house.’’
Written by Linda Pearce
