Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Everyone at England Netball and the Vitality Netball Superleague is deeply saddened by the passing of Her Majesty The Queen and wish to extend our sympathies to the Royal Family at this time.

To Our Queen, for a lifetime of duty and service to our country, we thank you.

Following the news, we wanted to update you as to how this situation will impact the Netball Family over the coming days.

In the immediate aftermath, you will have seen that we shared our condolences across social media, and that the nation has now entered a period of ten days of mourning.

We recognise that you may have questions about how this will impact your netball sessions over the next few days, and so we wanted to provide an update following the Government’s guidance which has been shared regarding the protocol for sports.

It has been confirmed that grassroots sport can continue – a recognition of the fact that sport plays a huge role in bringing families and communities together which is exactly what we all need right now. We therefore recommend that all netball sessions continue as planned, and that they do so in a respectful manner. We ask all participants to observe a one minute’s silence before play, and we’d also welcome you to pay your respects in other ways that you see fit, be it through the wearing of black armbands or black hair ribbons. In addition, we also request that non-essential social media activity is paused.

A public bank holiday across the UK has now been approved by His Majesty King Charles for the day of the Queen’s funeral – Monday 19^th September.

On this day, we will be asking the entire Netball Family to pause any planned activity, both on and off court, to enable everyone the opportunity to mark the final day of the period of national mourning. England Netball will also be closed to enable staff to pay their respects.

From Tuesday 20^th September, we will revert to our regular schedules and programmes.