Paige Hadley: ‘I thought this could be it for me’

Paige Hadley can’t really remember a time before netball was in her life. But a disastrous injury made her thought it was all over.

Paige Hadley can’t really remember a time before netball was in her life.

“Mum played, umpired, coached and was on the committee for our local netball club, so I’d be there with mum from the first game of the morning until the last,” explains the Olympian.

“I think I played my first game when I was about seven, and I was a super shy kid, so I loved the fact that in netball, everyone has their job. No single person can do all of it, you have to stay in your section, so there’s a chance for everyone to do their thing.”

And in spite of living and breathing netball her entire life, Hadley was never the kind of athlete who had an “at-all-costs” approach to making it pro.

In fact, it wasn’t until her teens that the idea of playing netball as a career even seemed remotely possible.

“I hadn’t made any of my school’s representative teams, I hadn’t made it into the academy programs I’d tried out for, so I really didn’t think I had much of a shot,” she explains.

Showing up to her two-day state trials, esky full of a packed lunch courtesy of her mum, Hadley says she was beyond nervous. But it was here, after head coach Lenore Blades, (who is still heavily involved in mentorship for the NSW Swifts) saw something in the teen.

“I guess it was from that moment I kind of saw the scope of the opportunities available in netball,” says Hadley.

“I realised there was a pathway for me, whereas before that, I never really saw one.”

Paige Hadley had every netballer’s worst nightmare come true. Picture: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

A fledgling career and a year full of highs

That new pathway really started to speed up from the moment Hadley was selected to represent NSW, and by 2012, she was living in Canberra at the Australian Institute of Sport.

The following year, Hadley got her first official contract to play for the NSW team, something that coincided with her selection for the World Youth Cup team, which ended up with a silver medal in the Glasgow competition.

By the beginning of 2014, Hadley was in her prime. Having renewed for another two years with the Swifts, she was in a training session when life took a twist.

“I was going for a ball, which was a little bit too far in front. I tried to stay out of the circle, as a mid-courter, and suddenly I just felt this boom, boom, and let out a massive scream.”

“Some of the people watching knew immediately what had happened; some ran to me, some were in shock. It was kind of fight or flight,” she says.

The promising young athlete had just endured every netballer’s worst nightmare: a season-ending ACL injury.

“I was only 19, I was so naive,” she recalls. “If I’d known then what I know now, I think I would have been freaking out a lot more, but I don’t think I really understood how much rehab was ahead of me.”

In fact it wasn’t even until she was in the car, being driven home by her dad who’d rushed to training to pick her up, that the enormity of what Hadley’s injury might mean began to sink in.

“I just thought - ‘oh my god, this could be it for me. This past year may have been the best it was ever going to get for me.’ It was just an incredibly scary feeling, staring down the unknown and wondering if I’d ever get back to the level I’d been playing at.”

A gruelling climb back to the top

“These days, when a girl in our program does her ACL, the physios are there every day treating them,” says Hadley.

Back then, I was relying solely on my parents to drive me to the physio clinic, where I’d stay for hours because my mum had to go to work, then she’d come back and pick me up,” she recalls.

“Financially, I wasn’t independent yet. I was earning $11,000 a year, and while the Swifts paid for some of my rehab, my parents were also helping out a lot with the costs.”

Throwing herself into a ‘day-by-day’ attitude, Hadley says it was her refusal to look too far ahead that allowed her to focus on getting better.

That, and the support of two Swifts strength and conditioning coaches who Hadley says she is “forever indebted to”.

“I’d go to Parramatta Pool to do my water training, and they’d be there cheering me on,” she recalls.

“They sent me all this information about how to come back from an ACL, they’d check in constantly, they always had a plan for me.”

“Honestly,” Hadley continues. “If I didn’t have the support around me, I don’t think I would have been able to make it through.”

Yet return she did - after an entire year of gruelling rehab.

Paige Hadley is determined to pay forward the support she’s received. Picture: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images for Fox Sports)

“2015 was a World Cup in Sydney, and I figured there was no way I’d be in the squad for it,” she says.

“And then, a night before they announced the team, I got called in. It was honestly unreal.”

Australia won that World Cup - and every member of Hadley’s support team was there.

“I had my whole family there, even my Nan, everyone who’d been there with me through the tears, the heartache, the hours of training and rehab,” she recalls.

“For them to see me win a World Cup in Sydney was just a total life highlight.”

And while there have been many highlights since - including a gold medal in the 2022 Commonwealth Games and another World Cup win in South Africa in 2023 - Hadley is determined to pay forward the support she received by helping young women in the same position she was.

“I coach a lot of young girls privately,” she explains. “And one of the girls I coach, she unfortunately did her ACL about six months ago now. I’m not physio or anything, but I literally go to rehab with her, I go to physio with her.”

“It’s been six months now, and she’s back on the netball court, changing direction,” she continues proudly.

“To injure yourself so young, I think a lot of young girls can fall out of love with the game in the face of something like that, and it’s hard. So to be able to be there for someone like that was pretty incredible. I love being able to give advice, or show that my journey hasn’t been smooth. It hasn’t been easy like that. There has been doubt. There have been times I’ve doubted myself and feared the unknown. To be able to show that you can face all that and come back from it is really amazing for me.”