Something is rotten in the state of... Netball.  

Maybe not as dramatic as it sounds, but the long, torturous, turgid and weighty tragedy that netball has become is vaguely Shakespearean. 

Ali Williams spoke with Heather du Plessis-Allen yesterday around the collapse of the short-term relationship he and Anna Mowbray had with Netball NZ. He said he'd been blindsided by NNZ, who had, by email, walked away from negotiations designed to consolidate and rubber stamp the future of the professional game. 

Their master plan to pump new life, structure, and money into domestic netball had more than stalled – it collapsed.

Long story short, after a chaotic year of bloodletting and unheard-of instability within netball, which resulted in the game being rattled to the core, Williams and Mowbray rode in on white steeds to save the day, offering a feasible way out of the financial mire the game was bogged down in. 

Brilliant. On the surface, it looked calm and ready, but someone dropped bombs, and we kept forgetting that professional sport in NZ lives on a fractured plain, where nothing is a given, nor calm, nor steady. 

As per, NNZ have remained essentially silent, only releasing a short statement around the breakdown, stating that they have "a different perspective on comments that have been reported" but they recognise the confidentiality commitments made between the parties. 

So they won't say a thing, leaving the comments by Ali Williams to hang in the ether for people to make what they will of. There's quite a lot to unpack from his interview, here's my main takeaway.

After eight weeks of negotiation, how could anyone not see that the gap between the two groups around the final make-up of the proposed competition was so vast that it was doomed to fail?

Blindsided is a strong word. Someone wasn't listening, or someone is being economical with the truth.

I just can't work out who... is .... to be or not to be.