Basketball On The Internet.

MY daughter suggested today I am too much into "wise old sayings" but one has always served me well - leopards don't change their spots.

So it still concerns me that Basketball Australia chief executive Kristina Keneally last week felt the need to say she wants the WNBL to be the "premier women's sporting competition" in this country.

It's the kind of headline-grabbing, 30-second sound-bite for which politicians are notorious but, essentially, means precious little.

For a start, the WNBL has no hope whatsoever of displacing netball in the country's greater consciousness as the pre-eminent women's team sport.

I'll get to why in a second. The real question is why bother? What does that matter? Who cares?

I don't mean to furrow ground already trodden but where the league fits in women's sport is largely irrelevant.

How does it stack up against the WNBA for example? Or Euroleague? EuroCup? Other major competitions?

There's your selling point.

Trying to displace netball is so pointless and such a non-issue.

Netball IS entrenched as the No.1 team sport for women and girls in Australia. It is a fact.

It is as much a part of the country's culture and fabric as AFL footy in the south and west, NRL in the north and east.

In fact, the footy codes and netball are intertwined.

Take a country drive on any Saturday afternoon and you will see footy and netball together in a marriage made a century ago and as Australian as "Sat'dy arvo."

The girls are playing netball at the court near the footy ground, where the boys will be playing, mum and dad often huddled around a barby, draining a beer and just loving essential Aussie life.

Saying we want the WNBL to be the premier women's sporting competition is headline-grabbing but as meaningless as Mal Speed, the then-chairman of the league, suggesting the NBL would enjoy major sport status by the 1990s.

How'd that work out for us?

About as well as no child living in poverty.

Political rhetoric cannot double for actual progress.

If women's basketball is going to overtake netball, does that mean Basketball Australia has the funds and is ready to spend $5-10 million on an advertising campaign extolling our game's greater virtues?

No. Didn't think so. That could have started after the Opals shone at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and captured Australia's imagination, but BA had no more idea then than it has now on how to capitalise on its window.

So please, a little less rhetoric and a little more genuine commitment to thrusting the league into the greater mainstream consciousness.

Oh? What's that?

Yes, did happen to see where Netball Australia secured a TV rights agreement with Fox Sports and SBS which has all 69 games, including finals, from the ANZ Championship televised live by Fox Sports, while SBS2 shows the match of the Sunday round live, as well as providing coverage of the finals on its free-to-air television network.

There's also supplementary coverage on a Foxtel Go app, while Telstra streams the matches played in Oz live to mobiles.

The two-year telecast deal additionally includes all international Tests played by Australia - you know, by the Diamonds, those slightly more precious jewels than Opals.

Now how does the WNBL compare to that, pray tell?

Ah, just remembered. The ABC recently was asking BA to cut the WNBL season back to 16 rounds to accommodate the one game it shows each week.

And BA was still chest-pounding this week about how great that long-entrenched relationship with the ABC has been.

Really?

The ABC cares about women's basketball?

Or does its national charter mean it has content requirements which, to date, the WNBL fits into?

There's been precious little said about the onset or prospect of wnbl.tv lately so it's safe to presume if that's not dead in the water, it is grimly hanging onto a life preserver.

Which again makes BA's decision to shut down Canberra Capitals' live streaming of games look foolish.

Most of us can see BA's reasoning - that it didn't want an inferior version of its product on the market. Fair enough, from its corporate point-of-view.

But again, how stupid does that position look now?

If the club was willing to do it, stopping it without replacing it was counter-productive. If the telecasts had 10, 20, 100 or 1,000 subscribers makes no difference whatsoever.

The point BA so clearly missed is that it had an audience. All BA succeeded in doing was taking the product away from that audience.

So please, don't tell us again how the WNBL is going to be the premier women's sporting competition in Australia.

Show us the plan.

Reveal the blueprint.

Give us reason to believe after 32 years as a national competition, BA is driving something genuine to have the WNBL recognised as such.

Otherwise, either shut the hell up or wake up in a cold sweat when the clubs decide to reclaim their competition from you and go their own way.

Frankly, it cannot happen soon enough.