Thank you James Naismith for early Saturday mornings

by Murray Dewhurst in Auckland, New Zealand

 A Canadian bloke called James Naismith invented basketball in 1891. Something to do with providing an “athletic distraction” for wintertime sportsmen in Springfield, Massachusetts.

He sent a copy of his basketball rules to a sports teacher in New Orleans who in turn sent an interpretation of those rules to a school in England.

Somehow by the time basketball was first played in England a year or so later it had only a passing resemblance to Naismith’s rules.

Somehow it had turned into a passing game – no dribblers thank you very much! (Naismith’s rules at this stage allowed for ‘ball rolling’ only). Basketball was played outside, in all weather (today an exception is made for lightning storms) and played almost exclusively by women.

The sport of basketball initially spread through the British Empire and is now played worldwide by over 20 million people according to Wikipedia. Naismith had inadvertently created what is today called Netball.

The first international netball match was played in 1938 when a New Zealand team toured Australia – helping to fuel a sports rivalry that continues to this day and inspiring thousands of Kiwi kids to drag their parents out of bed early on cold, wet winter mornings for the netball run.