Money and attention has never been a driving force for Australia's top netballers.
Now-retired captain Liz Ellis said this week that she earned $A10,000 last year.
As Ellis and her Australian team-mates charged to victory over the Silver Ferns in the world championship final in November, television rights holder the ABC was showing British police dramas.
Aussie netball fans eventually got to see the final, albeit several hours after the final whistle.
Little wonder that Australia's top players, who speak with jaw-dropping awe at the attention given to their New Zealand counterparts, look slightly happier with life in recent weeks.
Some will earn a tidy $A50,000 from the inaugural 10-team ANZ Championship in the next three months, and all their matches will be shown live on pay television.
"The media attention to start with has been unbelievable," New South Wales Swifts captain Catherine Cox told the Sydney Morning Herald.
"I feel like I've been to a thousand launches this year -- the interest has been fantastic." The Swifts boldly hope to draw a crowd of 8000 to their season opener against the Southern Steel at Sydney's Acer Arena on Monday night.
Australia's TAB Sportsbet is offering betting on the championship, with the Melbourne Vixens $3 favourites, Waikato-BOP Magic at $3.50 and the Swifts at $5.
Still, not everyone is caught up in it.
The Swifts' promotional shoot at Sydney's Darling Harbour was interrupted this week when a woman pushing a baby stroller charged through the middle of shot, oblivious to the "famous" subjects.
In terms of sports bulletins and newspaper column space, the new competition has made a ripple but hardly a splash amid the endless sound bytes and pages of rugby league (Sydney) and AFL (Melbourne).
In Brisbane, 1.98m Jamaican teenager Romelda Aiken is proving a good selling point for the Queensland Firebirds.
The star import featured in a Brisbane Sunday Mail story at the weekend, although a rueful footnote illustrated the difference between the two netballing nations.
"The Queensland Firebirds are still looking for a naming rights sponsor. None of the Australia-based teams have signed a naming sponsor, while four of the five New Zealand teams have secured deals," it said.
Cox admitted the extra money was great, and may keep players in the sport for longer.
She hoped some players would start to build a marketable profile in Australia, in the mould of Silver Fern Irene van Dyk.
"I think when the public starts to really want to know what is happening in the netballer's lives, then the interest will come," Cox said.
"That's what happened to Irene. She became this phenomenal player that everyone wanted to know about. Fisher and Paykel snapped her up and now her house is full of white goods."
