Centre Pass

Netball is not football with your hands. The moment you catch the ball you may not move your landing foot, and you have three seconds to get rid of it — so the game is never about running with the ball. It is about where your team-mates are going, which of them has shaken off their marker, and whether you can find them before the whistle goes.

So that is all you do. Your side runs, marks, dodges and contests by itself; you decide where the ball goes. Tap a team-mate to pass to them and the game reads the corridor for you — flat when the lane is clear, a lob when a defender is in the way, a bounce pass under their arms when they have them up. Tap while the ball is still in the air and the next pass is already queued for the moment it is caught.

A pass is thrown to the space, not to the body. If your receiver is being marked the ball goes to the side their defender is not on, so they run onto it and the marker has to come through them to reach it; a receiver with nobody near them is thrown to directly, because a free player has no reason to run anywhere. It is why getting a team-mate half a metre of separation is worth more than finding the shortest pass.

Tapping empty court asks for a lead: whoever is allowed to stand there drives for the spot, and the ball follows them to it. That is how you open a defence up, because a marked player is a bad option and the game will tell you so — the caption under your target says what it would throw, and turns red when the throw would be a turnover.

Every position is locked to part of the court. A Goal Shooter never leaves the attacking third, a Centre may go anywhere except the two shooting circles, and a Goal Keeper cannot follow their opponent out of defence. Those restrictions are the whole tactical shape of the sport: the pass you want is often to someone who is not allowed to be where you are looking.

Only the Goal Shooter and Goal Attack may score, and only from inside the goal circle. Get the ball to one of them and a shoot button appears above their head: press and hold it to start the meter, and let go as the marker crosses the green band. Hold on too long and it fires itself, badly — but distance matters far more than timing, so working the ball closer beats a perfect release from the edge.