The club has already agreed more than this page used to admit. Its constitution sets out four aims and objectives, and a set of equality commitments, adopted at a general meeting. Those are below, quoted rather than paraphrased. What is still genuinely open is a vision and a short set of values in the club’s own words — and nobody should write those on its behalf, least of all its website.
What the club has already adopted
Quoted from the club constitution. These were agreed by the membership, not written for this website, and they can only be changed at a general meeting.
Aims and objectives
- To offer coaching and competitive opportunities in netball.
- To promote the club within the local community and netball.
- To ensure a duty of care to all members of the club.
- To provide all its services in a way that is fair to everyone.
On fairness and equality
The club “respects the rights, dignity and worth of every person and will treat everyone equally”, and is “committed to everyone having the right to enjoy their sport in an environment free from threat of intimidation, harassment and abuse”. Every member carries “a responsibility to oppose discriminatory behaviour and promote equality of opportunity”.
Membership is open to anyone interested in promoting, coaching, volunteering or participating in netball, regardless of sex, age, disability, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion or other beliefs.
Why the rest is not filled with something plausible
The previous website carried plenty of confident language about the club being welcoming, friendly and ambitious. None of it had been agreed by anybody, none of it could be evidenced, and it is the single clearest reason that site failed to earn trust: a parent can tell the difference between a claim and a commitment.
An invented value is worse than a blank page. A blank page says “we have not done this yet”. An invented one says “we will tell you whatever sounds right”.
What the club already has
One thing is settled and evidenced, and it is doing the work a mission statement normally does: the complete pathway. NW Panthers runs squads from Under 9 through to seniors, plus Back to Netball for adults. A player who joins at nine has somewhere to be at nineteen, and at thirty-nine.
That is not a slogan. It is a structural fact about how the club is organised, which is exactly why it is defensible — a neighbouring club cannot copy a pathway it does not operate. See the pathway on the homepage.
Vision
One sentence describing what the club is trying to become. Not what it does — what it is for.
Questions that produce a real answer:
- If the club were doing its job perfectly in five years, what would be different for netball in Chester?
- What would be lost if the club folded tomorrow?
- What do you want a player to still be doing at twenty-five because of this club?
[CLUB — committee to agree]
Mission
What the club actually does, day to day, in service of that vision. Concrete enough to be checked against.
Questions that produce a real answer:
- Who does the club exist for, and who does it deliberately not exist for?
- What does the club promise every player, regardless of ability?
- What would the club refuse to do, even if it would help it win?
[CLUB — committee to agree]
Values
Three or four. Not eight. Each one should be capable of losing the club something.
A value only means anything if it rules something out. “We are welcoming” costs nothing and every club says it. “Everyone who turns up gets court time, even in matches we might lose” is a value: it has a price, and a parent can check whether you keep it.
Tests for each candidate value:
- Could the club plausibly do the opposite? If not, it is not a value, it is a platitude.
- Has it ever cost the club anything? If it never has, it is aspiration rather than practice.
- Would a player recognise it from experience? Ask two of them before publishing.
- Is it written in the club’s own words? If it could be lifted onto another club’s site unchanged, rewrite it.
[CLUB — committee to agree, three or four]
What happens once they are agreed
These are not decoration for one page. Agreed values change how the rest of the site is written — the joining page, the squad pages, how coaches are described, and what the club says to a beginner who is worried about being the worst player there. That is why this is blocked rather than skipped.
Recorded in the discovery pack as F-E20: club values, mission or vision as agreed. It blocks this page and the brand strategy behind it.