Baroness Sue Campbell outlines transformative vision for netball after women’s football success

Baroness Sue Campbell believes she no longer needs to fight for women’s sport to be taken seriously after starting as the chair of England Netball.

During an eight-year spell as the FA’s director of women’s football, Campbell helped transform a male-focussed strategy to one that propelled the Lionesses and wider women’s game to new heights.

But in netball, she will be leading a women-first sport that she insists has an important role to play in promoting healthy lifestyles for women and girls.

And, while Campbell will bring her experience in women’s football with her, she believes the differences between the two sports can work in netball’s favour – and help to drive progress quicker.

“There is a massive financial and commercial difference for netball and I think they are very different sports,” she said. “I think because netball is very much designed for girls and driven by a team of people with a massive passion for the game itself, in some way you haven’t got to fight the wider cultural environment.

“We can work to really bring the game to girls and women of all ages and all abilities in the way we think best, so I am really excited by that and it is a much cleaner landscape to drive change.

“I think every sport creates its own blueprint. When I went into football in 2016, women’s football wasn’t regarded as a particularly important part of the strategy. Now it is central to the strategy of the FA, so it is a very different context to be working in a governing body where the predominant force was the men’s game.

“The difference now in netball is that it is a women’s game, run by women for girls and women.”

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Campbell will return to netball in January having played the sport up to England U21 level before going on to coach and umpire while she worked as a teacher and lecturer in Physical Education.

She then served as chief executive of the Youth Sports Trust followed by the chair of UK Sport prior to starting her term at the FA.

She added: “Every job I have had, I have learned a lot, you make a lot of mistakes. I think you probably learn more from your mistakes than the things you get right.

“What I certainly realised in football was that you could create what I call a virtuous circle which is where you can turbocharge participation, engagement, interest in the game by success at the top. But you had to do a lot a work of to plan and prepare so that when you are inspired there was an opportunity to go and participate.

“There is nothing worse than being inspired and then having nowhere to go and play. So I think we need to look at we’ve got the Commonwealth Games in a couple of years, we’ve got the World Cup, how do we begin now to create more opportunities for girls to play and be inspired by those moments?

“How do we build the profiles of players? How do we begin to create those household names like we have managed to with women’s football.

“And how do we, with the launch of the new Super League in March, how do we begin to provide players with the real opportunity to play professionally full-time at the highest level of the game?”