Bexley’s Claire O’Brien and Kirrawee’s Toni Anderson have been chosen in the Australian under-21s squad.
The final team for the World Youth Cup in Gaborone, Botswana will be selected from the 24-player squad.
It has been a big year already for O’Brien and Anderson, having been contracted to the NSW Swifts and Giants Netball respectively for the inaugural Super Netball season.
The team was named by Australian World Youth Cup coach Tania Obst alongside national selector Jill McIntosh and Netball Australia’s general manager pathways Stacey West and features 13 players contracted to new Super Netball franchises.
The final squad will be chosen next month.
Obst said Super Netball had had a positive effect on player development.
“Nothing beats being in a quality training environment and when you are training with some of the best netballers in the world you are more accountable at training and obviously at a match. I think the basic skill level of some of the girls has improved with what we’ve seen on the [Super Netball] court and the ANL court over the last eight weeks,” Obst said.
“Having the ANL competition running alongside SSN has allowed the girls who don’t get a game in SSN to go back into the ANL environment and execute what they are practicing and that has been really good from our point of view in that we’ve been able to see that transition onto court rather than just on the training court.
“The ANL finals competition last weekend was fantastic with three of the four games going into overtime. That pressure cooker environment is great for the athletes to experience.
“The challenge now for our athletes who aren’t on the SSN court and are back in their club environments is keeping that standard up every single time that they do hit the court whether that’s on a SSN court or in their state league, they need to be playing at the level that will be expected in Botswana.”
