Basketball has plummeted into an abyss, in terms of attractiveness to Australian women, compared to the sporting steam train launched by the behemoth AFL.
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The frank assessment has been made by WNBL games record-holder Jessica Bibby, among a cohort of ex-basketballers and other code switchers revelling in fresh sporting surrounds.
From food and fans to revelatory media exposure, the AFLW already has the top domestic basketball competition for women well and truly blanketed, Bibby says.
"I'm absolutely terrified, petrified, for it.
"Basketball is never mentioned any more. We're now talking women's AFL, we're talking women's Big Bash, netball super league, rugby sevens ... it's scary because I look at it and I'm not quite sure how basketball can get off the mat," Bibby told Fairfax Media.
"Yes, Basketball Australia can say there's the Olympics and there's world championships and you can go overseas, but I still think being appreciated in your own backyard is more important than any of that.
"I played basketball in Adelaide every year and you used to literally hear the girls' sneakers squeaking because of the lack of people in the crowd. Now you roll up to a suburban oval to 10,000 people for AFLW. As athletes we want to be appreciated, we want people to cheer for us and we want to be in situations where we can get the best of everything, and the AFL is absolutely doing that right now. I think there's a real chance that you're going to get a lot of girls starting to make that cross over just because of the opportunities that the AFL has provided in a very short period of time."
The AFLW competition is only four weeks old but at the mid-point of the inaugural season former professional basketballer, now Adelaide footballer, Erin Phillips is among the very best performers.
Bibby, 37, who also played in the WNBA for New York Liberty, is reinventing herself in the AFLW for Greater Western Sydney.
In between commuting from Canberra to Sydney for footy training, Bibby still coaches basketball, still adores the sport and hopes to be more involved in future. But to do that now, she says, would have cost her money and she feels that, playing in the AFLW, she is at the new cutting edge, even if female footballers' pay needs improving.
"I want to do what I can to help basketball but what opportunity is there? I was offered some assistant coaching roles this season but it would have come at a financial cost to me. It would have cost me to continue to be involved in the game that I love," Bibby said.
"With junior participation rates, basketball is fantastic ??? in the ACT we don't have enough facilities to accommodate teams that want to be playing. But if you can't see your heroes there's nothing to aspire to and then you can't expect little girls to continue. I mean, what are they striving for?
"So basketball needs to be on television. It needs to be put back into the vision of young girls.
"This is not a knock on lawn bowls but Foxtel had a super lawn bowls league on TV. Wonderful. But if basketball can't do that for a sport where we are internationally elite, and it's one of the most participated in junior sports in the country, and you can't get on TV there's no hope."
