Star NSW Swifts signing Grace Nweke on leaving New Zealand, heading to Super Netball and Silver Ferns eligibility ban
Newly minted NSW Swifts goaler Grace Nweke heads into camp with her Super Netball side next week, where she will stare down the national side she is no longer eligible for.
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Grace Nweke has conceded the thought of not being in camp with the Silver Ferns in her newly adopted home city is almost a “cruel joke”.
New Zealand head into camp in Sydney next week ahead of a clash against the NSW Swifts, a team that will feature newly minted goaler Nweke, the star signing of the 2025 Super Netball season.
Just a few months after helping the Ferns to a drought-breaking Constellation Cup series win against the Diamonds, Nweke is technically an outsider, her decision to play in Australia torpedoing her eligibility to play for the Kiwis this year.
“If I think about it, it makes me quite upset to be honest,” Nweke said of the idea of having to confront her new normal.
“I love that group. I love the culture there. I love what we’ve built - and I feel like, in the past years that I’ve been a part of the group, I’ve been able to give a lot of myself as well as grow as a leader and a player in that group.
“To not be able to be a part of continuing to give to the group, it sucks, to be honest. I definitely have a lot of FOMO (fear of missing out).”
Nweke’s decision to leave the ANZ Premiership’s Northern Mystics for the challenge of competing in the league widely regarded as the best in the world is layered and personal.
The 22-year-old realised she needed change on and off the court to evolve and flourish.
“I had this day at Mystics training where I was just looking around and I was hearing people talk and looking at the court we trained on and I was thinking to myself: ‘I can’t do this again next year’,” she said.
“It’s not like one person or one reason or any negative experiences, I think it’s just realising you’ve outgrown a place and not feeling inspired and challenged anymore.”
The stumbling block to an Australian move was a New Zealand Netball ruling that to remain eligible for the national team, the Silver Ferns, athletes had to be playing in the domestic ANZ Premiership.
But believing no other New Zealand franchise would offer more growth or better coaching than she was already getting in Auckland and knowing she did not want to line up against the Mystics, Nweke decided on a Super Netball move, despite knowing she was unlikely to be granted an exemption to the national eligibility rules.
While she did sound out New Zealand coach Noeline Taurua - double checking her eligibility status and seeking advice on whether the veteran mentor believed her game was Super Netball ready - the decision to leave the nest was hers alone.
And she will wear the consequences, even if she would like to see the rules change in the future.
“We’re the only country in netball that has this rule,” she said.
“I just think that’s what happens in professional sports. You have these leagues where (fans are) excited to watch because players from all over the world come together to put the best product possible out on the court.
“That’s exciting and entertaining, and that grows everyone involved, and there’s lots of buy-in.
“Selfishly, I would love to be eligible to play for the Ferns still - in saying that, I completely understand and respect where Netball New Zealand have come from in that ruling.
“(But) I don’t think that that’s going to save the game in New Zealand.”
Plenty of other players across the Tasman are ready to put their hands up to play Super Netball and all will be watching carefully to see how Nweke’s move pans out.
It’s something that has pushed the born and bred Aucklander well outside of her comfort zone in her first move away from home.
But she knows tackling the likes of Diamonds defender Sarah Klau every day at training, as well as forming combinations with England shooter Helen Housby and Diamonds midcourter Paige Hadley - all now her Swifts teammates - will only improve her game, and ultimately benefit the Ferns.
“I don’t see myself as a trailblazer of any sort, or that I’m doing anything revolutionary,” Nweke said.
“It was quite a personal decision and I’m doing this for me.
“I do hope, though, that the conversation around eligibility and ANZ Premiership versus Suncorp (Super Netball) and the two leagues in Aussie and New Zealand, I hope that it’s an opportunity for the people who make these decisions … to give it a second thought.
“If we can come out of this, and I had to miss out on a Ferns season, potentially, but it means that following season, I can play in this league and come back home to play for New Zealand, then that would be an amazing result.”
Until then though, Nweke will stand across from the Ferns next week in her red Swifts dress feeling a “bit weird” as her new team prepares to take on the Kiwis in a pre-season clash.
“It’s just almost like a cruel joke that I had to miss out but they’re going to be right there across the court,” she said.
“But it’s a decision I’ve made that I do not regret. This is the beginning of really having to live through the implications of my decision and make the best of it.”
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Originally published as Star NSW Swifts signing Grace Nweke on leaving New Zealand, heading to Super Netball and Silver Ferns eligibility ban
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