Who Invented Netball?

Netball doesn't have a single inventor or a single invention date — it developed gradually, over roughly a decade, out of an adapted version of basketball being played by women in England.

It started with basketball

Basketball was invented in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891 by James Naismith. World Netball's history notes that women took up the game almost immediately. It also tells a story that matters for netball: Clara Baer, a sports teacher in New Orleans, wrote to Naismith for the rules and read the lines on his court diagram as areas players couldn't leave. In 1899, those zones were written into the rules of women's basketball — an early form of netball's restricted playing areas.

Martina Bergman-Österberg's role

The story in England centres on the Swedish physical education pioneer Martina Bergman-Österberg — Madame Österberg — and her physical training college for women, first in Hampstead, London, then in Dartford, Kent. World Netball's history says netball was first played in England in 1895 at her college; other accounts date an informal introduction of basketball there to 1893, after a visit she made to the United States.

Who brought the game to the college is debated. An American visitor known as Dr Toles is usually credited, but the England Netball heritage project Our Netball History notes that there is "much discussion on the subject", and that his name doesn't seem to have been linked with games of any kind after his short visit. Another American, Miss Porter of Baltimore, is also credited with bringing basketball to the students.

Becoming a distinct sport

At the college, the rules were adapted and reworked by Madame's students over several years into something distinct from basketball: restricted playing areas, no dribbling, and rings with nets rather than baskets. The name "net ball" was in use by the late 1890s. At first there were no standard rules — World Netball's history mentions both nine-a-side and five-a-side versions — and the first codified rules were published at the start of the twentieth century. The sport spread from there through the British Empire.

So who "invented" it?

There's no single inventor. Netball is better understood as an evolution — credited most directly to Martina Bergman-Österberg and the students at her college, building on women's basketball as introduced by American visitors, refined into its own sport over several years rather than created in a single moment. Exactly who introduced the game, and when, is still debated by netball historians.

Where to go next

See history of netball for how the sport developed and spread after this early period, and netball vs basketball for how the two sports differ today as a result of this shared origin.

Sources

All information on this page is given to the best of our knowledge at the time of writing (October 2026), after referring to the sources below. Where sources disagree, we say so on the page.