Tracey Neville calls on fans to be England's 'eighth player' at World Cup
Tracey Neville has spoken of her desire to ‘see red’ at next month’s World Cup in Liverpool where she hopes a strong contingent of England fans will act as the squad’s ‘eighth player’.
The head coach of the Vitality Roses has already challenged her players to create a legacy on a par with the London 2012 Olympics when the biggest tournament in netball begins on July 12.
Hosts England are tipped as strong contenders to go all the way in the competition and upgrade their bronze medal in the 2015 edition of the tournament in Sydney, having defeated top-ranked side Australia twice in the past year, at the Copper Box Arena during January’s Quad Series in a repeat of their historic Commonwealth Games final victory last year.
“For me, I just want to see red,” said Neville. “I want to see red in the stadium. I want to come out and all the fans to be behind us. I want that eighth player, I want that noise, I want that volume.
“More importantly for me, [when] I go on these tours, a hotel, a netball venue they all look the same. But this is in my own region. It’s a hybrid region, people can commute in and that’s what I really want. I want to walk down the street and be the person that people support and not the people that get ridiculed.”
With the resurgence of African nations Malawi, Uganda and South Africa, coupled with Australia’s desire to avenge their Commonwealth podium heartache, this World Cup is one of the most open in recent memory. Neville insists home support and increased media scrutiny will be crucial if England are to put their best foot forward.
“I want the press to be behind us, I think that’s huge,” she continued. “There’s always something within the England team that Australia and New Zealand are constantly criticising us about and I feel we need that now from commentators and the press.
“Let’s have someone egging us on and really intimidating the opposition.
“We’ve spent many World Cups in predominantly Australia or New Zealand where you walk into these stadiums and they’re meant to be a neutral venues and they’re full of green and yellow.
“At the Commonwealth Games, they put green and yellow in the shoots, so that when Australia won they could be fired off. Obviously that backfired.”
Neville was speaking at the launch of the #WeAreRising campaign by Vitality in Liverpool, where the title sponsor of the 10-day tournament pledged to fund one grassroots netball coach for every 100 goals scored during the World Cup.
She backed the programme to dilute the spread of netball coaches more evenly across the UK, a theme which resonates with England captain player Serena Guthrie who crossed the channel on many occasions from her home in Guernsey to play the sport growing up.
“My one coach, Linda Andrews, would travel with me across to Sheffield or Bath or wherever we were going and we would have to get a boat or a train,” revealed Guthrie.
“Weather dependent, sometimes we were on boats at eleven o’clock at night, seasick, trying to get to somewhere on the coast in England to drive up to Sheffield the next day.
“Linda to me is actually family because of those experiences. In all of our careers we’ve had that one person who’s been willing to go the extra mile for you and be with you - to not even know if you’re going to make it - but go with you anyway because that was your dream.”
England begin their World Cup campaign against Uganda on July 12, followed by tests against Scotland and Samoa in the group stages.
