The Giants veteran who’s been playing the game longer than her teammate has been alive

They’re the yin and yang of the Giants but rookie playmaker Hope White and 20 season goaler Jo Harten make a perfect pairing on court.

One is in her 20th season of national league netball and has been playing for longer than the other has been alive.

The other, speaks a language sometimes so foreign to the first she needs translation.

Welcome to the sometimes weird and wacky but mostly fruitful relationship between Giants Netball veteran Jo Harten and rookie playmaker Hope White.

At 36, Harten is the second-oldest player in Super Netball, just a few months younger than Adelaide Thunderbirds goaler Romelda Aiken-George.

She is also double the age of rookie Hope White, who was added to the Giants’ full-time contract list last year when veteran midcourter and former Silver Ferns captain Gina Crampton announced her pregnancy.

Jo Harten has been playing netball longer than Hope White has been alive. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

The pair may seem like the league’s odd couple - certainly White admits she was intimidated by Harten and veteran Giants coach Julie Fitzgerald when she came on board - “well, I think I was intimidated by everyone, to be honest, because it was new environment but it’s chill now, we’re good friends”.

They share their own signature handshake and while Harten occasionally struggles with White’s lingo - “I feel like sometimes, I’ll say some stuff and she’ll be like, ‘What do you even mean?’ “ - the pair is forming an outstanding on-court combination that is marking White as a player of the future.

A Matiland product, who started her career in the Newcastle Netball Association, White was driving two hours each way to training earlier this year, racking up petrol bills of hundreds of dollars and clocking thousands of kilometres in her trusty Mazda each week in her bid to become a Super Netball player.

💬 “It can be quite hard when you start the season 0-3 to actually get some confidence and belief back in yourselves and that’s what we did today.” pic.twitter.com/oU0NXxQtmL

— GIANTS Netball (@GIANTS_Netball) May 3, 2025

White started played at age five in Newcastle, well after Harten earnt her first national league contract in her native England, with the Galleria Mavericks in the year White was born and just before she made the move to New Zealand to play in the ANZ Championship, the forerunner to Super Netball.

By the time Super Netball was starting, and Harten had made the move across the Tasman with her Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic coach Fitzgerald for the inaugural Giants season, White was 10 and loving netball but never dreamt she would reach the same heights.

She remembers looking up to another Newcastle product and Giants player, in Sam Poolman, but still did not believe she could make the grade.

“I remember Sam Pullman when I was growing up, because she’s obviously from Newey as well, I remember seeing her and thinking, well, it can happen but I still didn’t really believe that I’d ever be there.”

It was not until she tried out for the state U17 team - going to trials mainly for experience - and making the team as a bottom-age player, that she thought there may be a chance to make a living from the game.

Hope White was made a full time Giant this season. Picture: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

After earning a training partner position with the Giants for this season, she was called into the full-time squad when Crampton announced her pregnancy and made her debut in round 1, turning the match against the Queensland Firebirds when she entered the game in the second quarter.

Turns out, there was a bit of Harten magic involved there as well.

“She gave me a little pep talk before I went on my first game,” White said.

“But literally, Jo and all the girls have been so good with supporting me, they all give me little rev ups and pep talks and just tell me to back myself and use my strengths.”

Just three games into her professional career, White is not about to claim a career as long or decorated as Harten, who made her international debut a year after her birth and has a Commonwealth Games gold medal and three World Cup medals to her name.

“It is pretty crazy,” she said of how long Harten has played.

“But it’s also pretty cool. It’s pretty cool for Jo that she’s been able to play that long at such a high level and has literally achieved so much.

“Right now, it’s my first year so I feel like I want to play netball for as long as I can.

“But I don’t know, because I don’t know what I’m going to do when I grow up.”

Originally published as The Giants veteran who’s been playing the game longer than her teammate has been alive