Super Netball news: Ash Brazill reveals toll of Collingwood’s withdrawal ahead of final match
Super Netball stalwart Ash Brazill will play her final match in the league this weekend not knowing whether she has taken the court for the last time. Find out why here.
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Now that the end is here, Ash Brazill gets to do the thing that she loves most.
Brazill will play the final Super Netball game of a stellar national league career on Saturday night when the Collingwood Magpies play for the last time.
Whether it’s her last ever competitive netball game, only Brazill knows.
Netball Australia’s decision on Friday to extend the current Collective Player Agreement (CPA) covering the Diamonds until August 31 meant that members of the national squad — Brazill included — learnt their World Cup fate on Friday.
Already, Brazill and her Pies teammates, especially co-captain Geva Mentor and coach Nicole Richardson, had found the past month mentally exhausting and draining.
“I’ve never felt like this,” Brazill said.
“Just the exhaustion and the mental side of it.
“I think a lot of people probably thought, well, ‘Braz’ is retiring so it doesn’t mean much.
“But being a captain and seeing what the girls have gone through and just thinking, well, where is netball at if Collingwood is going, has been exhausting.
“All the meetings with the club, with Netball Australia just so this never happens to another team again, you’re obviously doing it for the right reason but it’s just been exhausting.”
To have another layer of anxiety piled on top of that for Brazill and Diamonds squadmate Sophie Garbin has been exasperating.
To keep a positive mindset amid the Magpies gloom, the paid has been looking forward to the phone calls that were meant to arrive on Tuesday to inform them whether they would be heading to the World Cup.
“How do we stay positive in an environment where it’s very hard to find positives?” Brazill said.
“(Those phone calls) are something that Soph and I have been bouncing (off one another): ‘Diamonds calls are coming’. And then for it not to come, it’s just been exhausting and upsetting as well.
“It’s something that comes around once every four years and to feel like you don’t even know when you’re getting a phone call has been pretty distressing.”
Brazill is in the unique situation of being a Collingwood AFLW player as well as a Super Netballer.
Where one door closes, another will be open as soon as her World Cup campaign is over — whether that’s in South Africa in early August, or has already come crashing down, in which case, Brazill will take a quick holiday before switching sports.
Lining up with the Magpies again could have been a big ask given the brutal axing of the netball program and Brazill conceded she was initially “pretty upset with the club”.
Not just for the current athletes and coaching staff either.
“I would have loved to coach Collingwood one day and coached the team that I played for but that’s now off the table and that’s been tough,” she said.
But the Magpies owning their part in the downfall of the netball program has been welcomed.
“I think one thing about the club is they’ve owned where they went wrong and what they should have done better and so I guess that’s all you can ask for,” she said.
“We’ve got a new CEO who’s come in and he’s changing a lot quickly.
“It is sad that Collingwood no longer have netball team but I think in the end it’s a business and I think we were just bleeding the club money in the end.
“But I just think about my seven years at the club and I’m just so grateful for the opportunity that I’ve got.
“Yes, this sucks. But if it wasn’t for the club, I wouldn’t have been able to be an All-Australian AFL player.”
And she believes she probably wouldn’t have been a Diamond either.
“I honestly back in that footy made me a better netballer,” Brazill said.
“I work at the club as well as a media content creator, so like even things I’ve learned in that space for like life after netball has been huge.”
Brazill believes you get out what you put into things.
So it shouldn’t surprise that at every game since she’s made her decision, she has been thanked by so many for bringing them joy with the way she plays.
Whether it’s fans that have appreciated her netball, young people struggling with their sexuality that have taken strength from her decision to come out publicly, or the 100 or so friends and family who watched her play her final game in Perth, they’ve been able to watch Brazill in her happy place.
To be playing the Fever in her final game is a neat symmetry for Brazill, who will have wife Brooke and children Louis and Frankie, as well as her parents and best mate watching Saturday’s match in Launceston.
“For me, it’s literally a fairytale that I get to play my old team and just play the game I love one more time with and against the girls that I love.”
The match will be emotional and a win against the Fever - who are playing to seal a top-two spot and double chance in the final - will be a momentous challenge.
But when the whistle sounds for the first centre pass, Brazill and her teammates will be able to shed the baggage of the past month and just go out and do what they love.
“In the end we’re just athletes and all we want to do is play netball,” she said.
“The fun thing (through this stressful time) has been at the end of the week, just being able to get on court and play netball with each other.
“It’s always been my happy place.
“When I was coming out it was a place where I could be 100 per cent me and I wasn’t judged on my sexuality, it was all about my ability.
“It was somewhere where I felt safe to be who I am. And it’s remained that place. So I’m definitely going to miss it.”
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