A Review of the Essential Visual Skills Required for Netball: Beyond 20-20 Optometry

Many sports place demands on vision and certain visual skills, and this has long been acknowledged. Among all activities, athletic performance places some of the highest demands on the visual system. Sports vision's fundamental component is the growth and improvement of an athlete's visual ability.

To identify a variety of visual skills essential to netball players.

Studies were obtained from the following databases: EBM Reviews, Current Contents, Science Direct, Google Scholar, CISTI Source (1993–June 2021), SportDiscuss (1975–June 2021), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, PubMed (1966–June 2021), and international e-catalogues. A keyword search yielded MeSH headings; “visual skills, “hand-eye coordination”, “peripheral vision”, “eye movements”, “netball vision”, “netball rules”, “reaction time”, “speed of recognition”, “accommodation facility,” “visual memory”, “discriminating efficiency”, “visual endurance”, “motor learning” and “cognitive function” which were combined and exploded.

This study used 65 full-text English-language papers from 90 citations found through electronic searches. 40 Articles remained after removing duplicates and reviewing the full-text versions.

The evidence in this study reveals that, although current research still frequently concentrates on visual skills, there is a need to narrow this attention to the requirements of a certain sport. Additionally, identifying the visual abilities necessary for netball, enables talent identification, effective training, and testing of these abilities.