England Netball has made serious strides in recent times.

Participation is up by 34 per cent in four years and some of the promotional initiatives outlined by Joanna Adams, the body's marketing and commercial director, to Members of Parliament on the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee are touched with genius.

But I couldn't help but chuckle on reading paragraph 10 of the written evidence the organisation submitted to that committee's recent inquiry into Women and Sport.

It said: "As a non-Olympic sport, netball does not qualify for funding or specialist support from UK Sport [Britain's elite sports funding body]; Sport England [the grass-roots agency] fund the whole sport.

"While we are grateful for Sport England financial support, we feel disadvantaged by not being able to access the specialist support provided by UK Sport.

"Arguably, this would enhance and potentially accelerate our mission to become world champions."

England Netball should be careful what it wishes for.

England's netball team failed to win a medal at Glasgow 2014 after losing the match for bronze against Jamaica ©Getty Images



If it was part of the UK Sport funding and performance system, there is a good chance it would be contemplating a likely reduction of the support it receives in the wake of the England team's failure to win a medal at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

A comparison with water polo - whose cause I have espoused in vain as it has lost all its elite performance funding, in spite of building an immensely promising women's team well-populated with potential role models - is instructive.

Water polo is, of course, an Olympic sport and, as such, is covered by a UK Sport high performance regime that, it is argued, puts team sports at a disadvantage in the line-up for Lottery cash.

It was announced last February by UK Sport that the £4.54 million ($7.53 million/€5.54 million) water polo had initially been awarded to see them through to the Rio 2016 Olympics had been redistributed to other sports.

"Water polo was among the sports that were not able to demonstrate they had a realistic chance of performing well within the top eight in Rio 2016 and targeting a medal performance in 2020," UK Sport said.

I'll spare readers another detailed run-through of why I think this is a lamentably short-sighted decision.

Great Britain's women's water polo squad has had its funding cut for not, according to UK Sport, showing future Olympic promise ©Getty Images



While water polo was not part of Glasgow 2014, around two months after that devastating funding announcement, in April, England's men's and women's water polo teams both took gold medals at their Commonwealth Championships in Aberdeen.

(The Scottish men took bronze for good measure.)

So, if water polo can take Commonwealth gold yet see its high performance funding disappear, will - or should - England Netball, having failed to make the Glasgow 2014 podium, suffer a cut in the £1.27 million ($2.13 million/€1.59 million) of high performance funding it received in 2013-2014 from Sport England?

Well, I don't think it has all that much to fear.

When I asked Sport England if netball's elite end award was subject to the same performance criteria as under UK Sport's "No Compromise" programme, it confirmed that it was not.

"We have agreed annual targets with each sport upon which the success of each programme is assessed," the grass-roots body told me.

As for whether netball should see its funding cut, while I would hate to see that happen (just as I think the water polo ruling was a mistake), it is hard equally to brush aside the argument that there should be consistency in the way individual sports are treated.

It is true that the netball team fares better in the world rankings: England lies third at the moment, against 12th for the Great Britain women's water polo team in the most up-to-date rankings I can find.

In a sport dominated by Commonwealth nations, England's netball team are ranked third ©Getty Images



But elite netball is totally dominated by Commonwealth countries - you have to descend to Switzerland in joint 30th place to find a piece of territory that wasn't coloured pink on the map at one time or another, although in the case of the United States in 29th this pre-dated the age of international sport.

Women's water polo is played most competitively by the giants of Olympic competition - the US, Russia and China are ranked one, two and three; should the British team not get some sort of credit for this when comparisons are drawn between sports for funding allocation purposes?

The bottom-line is that both these activities are energetic, skilful, highly tactical team sports that are exciting to watch and could play important roles in persuading more women to adopt healthier, more active lifestyles to the benefit of everyone - and the national Exchequer.

If given the resources to compete effectively, whether as England or Great Britain - and we are talking probably no more than £3 million ($5 million/€3.7 million) a year between them - both high performance set-ups would produce self-confident, articulate, grounded individuals capable of acting as the best sort of sporting role models.

Unfortunately, it now seems that only one of them will be in a position to do this.