If the goal was to empower athletes, the netballers scored a big win

A bunch of workers dared to protest. Eventually, they won. Time-honoured tradition of collective action. In this case, the workers were athletes. Their sport won, too (although its administrators don’t get that yet). And every single netball player across the nation will benefit. They have already.

That’s the most glorious outcome of the actions of netball star Donnell Wallam, the 28-year-old Noongar woman and Queensland Firebirds’ shooter who stood up for herself and for her kin. She stood up for all of us by speaking her mind when power didn’t want her to. Wallam may not have read Rules for Radicals, the ’70s handbook on community organising by Saul Alinsky, but she brought one of Alinsky’s main tenets to life: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalise it, and polarise it.”

Firebirds shooter Donnell Wallam found herself at the centre of a sports stoush about sponsorship, ethics and the rights of athletes.Credit: Getty

Target – Hancock Prospecting. Lang Hancock’s racist comments frozen for all to see. Personalised the pain that our First Nations people suffer. And polarised the nation.

What happened? Wallam sought an exemption from wearing a uniform bearing the logo of Hancock Prospecting. No wonder she resisted. I won’t repeat the hideous comments about First Nations people made by founder of the miner, Lang Hancock. Those comments were a disgrace and the company should have apologised long ago. Get rid of the portraits of Lang from the company foyer and website. Nothing to honour here.

Wallam’s own team backed her choice. Then the pressure started. Poor bloody woman. She finally caved so the sport, in financial strife again, could get $15 million. Cruel Hancock Prospecting withdrew its funding anyway. That just shows Wallam saw straight through to the bleak heart of this matter. We can’t unhear Lang Hancock’s words. Hancock’s executive chair, Gina Rinehart, boldly said sports organisations shouldn’t be used for social or political causes yet Hancock and others sportswash their companies on the reg. Is it an attempt at virtue-signalling when conservatives do it?

We must stop thinking of athletes as the property of their various franchises, workers without any agency or autonomy. Cricket Australia tried to break a strike years ago and failed. Athletes are labourers who entertain us – and, as workers, they have a right to strike over pay and conditions. I wish other athletes would do that too. There’s a bunch of sponsors who deserve a good striking. Gambling. Alcohol. Any business that is part of the gig economy and doesn’t pay its workers properly nor ensure its workers are safe.

Athletes are workers. Professional athletes are ever harder workers. Yes, they are often paid well (if briefly) but that must not mean buying silence. They compete to entertain spectators. Us. You. Me. Training at 5am. More training after that. Still more training when most of us are slumped in front of Netflix. It’s hard labour. It looks like fun to us because we aren’t running endlessly into hard muscle nor belting up and down on a hard court.

These people work bloody hard and deserve to have some say on where they work, how they work and who they work for. They should be able to reject blood money if that’s what they think it is.

Now everyone’s had two cents worth on this – but only three things really matter. One, that a First Nations woman in a sport with just a handful of Indigenous women in its top representative netty teams had the guts to take a stand. Two, that the workers, united, will never be defeated. And three, netball is mostly played by women – 1 million of them – and it’s notoriously underfunded. What is your business going to do about it? Maybe existing sponsors could up their contributions. Also, hello super funds.

We don’t yet know who will step in to sponsor the Diamonds but, with good judgment, netball’s administrators will choose a company where values align. Netball already had a wholesome reputation, only boosted by Wallam’s courage.

A former chair of the Australian Sports Commission, John Wylie, said in these pages he deplored player power. A former boss would say that. We spectators can only applaud the athletes who stand up for themselves. And for us.

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