Tracey Neville confirmed as new Super Netball team’s head coach
Former England boss Tracey Neville has been confirmed as head coach of Super Netball’s incoming new franchise, having served as an assistant in the Adelaide Thunderbirds’ premiership.
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As Super Netball’s newest arrival, and just the second international after New Zealander Noeline Taurua to be appointed to a head coaching role, Tracey Neville has committed to a Victoria-centric recruiting strategy — mostly by design, but also in part by circumstance.
Neville, 46, the Englishwoman who led her homeland to an historic Commonwealth Games gold medal on the Gold Coast in 2018, and this year assisted her friend Tania Obst to break the Adelaide Thunderbirds’ decade-long premiership drought, promised a “new beginning” and said lessons would be learnt from the mistakes made by previous start-ups.
Confirmed as predicted on Wednesday to lead Collingwood’s replacement as the Melbourne-based eighth SSN team, one owned by Craig Hutchison’s Sports Entertainment Network (SEN), Neville said from Cape Town where she is an observer at the Netball World Cup that a strong local presence drawn from a talent-rich state was essential to all-round success.
Declining to comment on specifics, including the potential defection to Melbourne of star Roses and T-birds shooter Eleanor Cardwell ahead of what she predicted would be a contracting “dogfight” that is scheduled but not guaranteed to open on Monday, Neville spoke only of the general recruiting strategy formed with SEN’s head of teams Richard Simkiss.
Code Sports understands the triple UK Superleague-winning coach was initially offered only a one-year deal, and Neville admits that she had sought a “two-plus-one” arrangement before settling on two years “with the option that potentially we can have discussions about me continuing for that third year,’’ in order to provide certainty for players and support staff.
“I wanted longevity,’’ she said. “In this coaching game, you’re in as quick as you’re out, so from my point of view it was about stability around the players… There’s a lack of trust in new franchises forming, particularly around this Victorian area, and we wanted to try and give a lot of confidence, trust, and create a stability around this next crop of players.’’
That, it seems, will include a strong homegrown presence, just as the Magpies started with six Victorians among the original contracted 10, and Neville said the list-building philosophy needed to “fit into the ethos of Victoria and Melbourne, where we’re actually being based” to also attract and galvanise a fan base to compete with the popular Melbourne Vixens.
“From my point of view, a huge part in our recruitment strategy is Victoria,’’ she said. “Having come from Manchester Thunder where I’ve been quite involved in their strategy building, a lot of it is about if you’re gonna try and get fan engagement you also have to bring through the (local) talent.’’
Regarding potential imports, Neville all spoke of the issue that the UK Superleague contracts have largely been finalised, so the tight time frame around the ownership of the new club and her own “unexpected” appointment after a process that ramped up following the SSN grand final meant “it was probably a month too late” for potential approaches, despite the obvious expectations around the intent of an English coach.
“But if you look at where I was with Adelaide Thunderbirds, a lot of that heritage and a lot of what Tania Obst is driving there is about South Australian players and bringing that next crop of youngsters through, and I think that is key in respect to engaging the next coaches, engaging the next players, but also engaging the fans within that Victoria, southeast Melbourne area.’’
Only existing SSN teams have been permitted to enter into “non-binding discussions” with their own players, as well as the ex-Pies and league outsiders, which Neville said left the new franchise several months behind and herself “on this escalator trying to run at 20 miles an hour trying to keep up with everybody else”.
The former attacking coach in Adelaide – and defensive coach at Manchester Thunder – said she would cherish her stint with the Thunderbirds, while the degree of difficulty in her decision to leave was increased by her friendship with Obst, who nevertheless accepted her desire to return to a head coaching role that she had been open about coveting.
Having overseen the rebuild of the England national program, Neville coached the Roses from 2015-19, before surprisingly stepping down for personal reasons after the reigning Commonwealth champions won their second bronze medal of her tenure at the 2019 World Cup.
“I took some time out and made a huge decision four years ago to quit a job that I deemed I was quite successful in and that in itself was a huge personal decision,’’ she said, admitting opportunities for head coaching roles like these are rare.
“But this one was more exciting because something hadn’t gone before it, and I think that’s something that’s really exciting about this franchise, that you’re not stepping into someone else’s shoes, you’re not trying to (continue) someone else’s history.
“What you’re doing is trying to create your own, and I think that’s something that being part of England netball and other franchises in the past that’s something that really, really excited me.’’
The only previous international to coach an SSN team was Taurua, the genius behind the new Sunshine Coast Lightning’s 2017-18 premiership double and now in charge of the Silver Ferns at the Netball World Cup in Cape Town.
Neville played 81 Tests as a WA/GA for England — and also had a club stint with Adelaide’s Contax in 2000 — before taking her first coaching job in the UK in 2011. A gregarious and respected member of the famous Manchester sporting family that includes footballing brothers Gary and Phil, Neville was an applicant for the Queensland Firebirds’ head job vacated by Roselee Jencke in 2020, but withdrew due to the potential difficulty of her family being able to join her due to Covid border closures.
Not the right time then is ideal now, it seems and, having identified Australia as the place to further her coaching career, the chance to develop the blueprint for a new franchise was irresistible. If potentially a little “crazy”, she said.
“But I think the passion and the love I have for netball, to create something with a group of people that I’m only just being introduced to, is something that I feel is so exciting, There’s a group of players here who can really make a stamp on this franchise, and I think there’s a lot of us that have learnt from past mistakes.’’
Simkiss said Neville had been identified as the outstanding candidate and best fit for SEN’s first netball foray after an “intense but condensed period of industry consultation, discussions, interviews and testing’’, and hailed her outstanding record.
“Tracey was identified and presented as a wonderful leader with an acute understanding and sense of this unique opportunity,’’ he said.
🙌â¤ï¸ pic.twitter.com/HApSTL4Hm5
— Tracey Neville MBE (@traceynev) August 2, 2023
“That is, to build and create a winning stature from scratch, to galvanise and build a brand new playing group, to create a sense of something new and something different and to engage in a whole new fan base connecting with Melbourne’s southeast corridor and beyond and to help grow netball right across the state of Victoria.”
Neville said she had been surprised to receive a text message from an unknown number – that turned out to belong to Simkiss – and stressed the process did not begin until after the Thunderbirds’ dramatic overtime defeat of the NSW Swifts in last month’s grand final.
“It just felt that my dad always said that you only ever get one opportunity and it’ll come completely out of the blue, you’ve just got to make the decision whether you continue on the same road or step off and continue on the next,’’ she said.
“And I was so excited that Richard offered me the position. This is the next step.’’
Originally published as Tracey Neville confirmed as new Super Netball team’s head coach
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