Every elite netballer across the country must have thought they had descended into some form of “bizarro world” this week.

There were photographers at training sessions. Actual photographers employed by newspapers. And the players didn’t even have to get into any sort of scandal, or appear in a scantily clad photo shoot, to make the media come knocking.

Sports editors getting onto the blower to club media managers, begging for an interview. Full-page features in metropolitan Sunday papers. Match highlights on nightly sports bulletins. It’s all been happening since the new-look ANZ Championship kicked off on the weekend.

It’s the kind of attention that our football codes generally take for granted. It allows coaches and players to often treat the media with arrogance or disrespect, because they know we’re not going anywhere.

But for our netballers the ANZ Championship, a new semi-professional league contested by Australian and Kiwi franchises, appears to have generated more publicity than the game would ever have dreamed of.

In the past, a Queensland Firebirds game would have been lucky to survive the chop when it came to deciding what to put in the briefs section at the end of the day.

This week, previews, reviews and even follow-up stories have been commonplace.

An initiative such as this has curiously been a long time coming when you consider netball is perhaps Australia’s most popular female sport. Too long for trail blazers like recently retired Australian captain Liz Ellis to cash in, although her high media profile would no doubt have played some part in the sport’s revival.

Each club has a $300,000 salary cap. While the likes of Darren Lockyer and Chris Judd earn double that or more by themselves each year, that’s a monumental increase for our netballers.

When I interviewed Noosa-based Firebird Kierra Trompf last week, she admitted they were basically playing almost for free in the now-defunct Commonwealth Bank Trophy.

“Compared to what we’ve been paid in the past and almost playing for free the last few years, it’s great,” Trompf, who is rumoured to now be earning around $20,000, said.

“It’s only going to get better apparently. The New Zealanders earn between 70 and 100 (grand) so we’re working towards that.”

Fox Sports, who will broadcast all 69 games live, and major sponsor ANZ have to take plenty of the credit for taking the sport to where it deserves to be.

In my opinion, netball is a terrific game. It takes skill, discipline, composure and fitness to succeed at the highest level.

And the thousands of youngsters who head to their local courts on a Saturday afternoon deserve to have something half decent to aspire to.

Hopefully it’s not a flash in the pan and the ANZ Championship can continue its momentum.