Hancock $15m netball deal pulled despite back down on uniform boycott

Netball Australia boss Kelly Ryan has insisted she is the right person to lead the riven sport as it emerged Hancock Prospecting pulled its $15 million sponsorship deal after Indigenous player Donnell Wallam had agreed to wear the company’s logo on her dress.

Ryan said there was nothing she could have done to pre-empt the crisis, which has pitted the Diamonds playing group against Ryan’s administration and the Gina Rinehart-controlled mining company. The embattled chief executive said she enjoyed the full support of the Netball Australia board.

“I’m absolutely committed [to the job], the only way we get through this is with stability,” Ryan said.

“Fundamentally the sport is in great shape. We have a million people who play it every year, we are the world No.1 team and Commonwealth Games gold medallists. We have an undeniably brilliant product and there are plenty of opportunities to commercialise the sport that sit around it, that we haven’t realised yet. That will become the biggest focus of finding a way through.”

Ryan’s comments came as it emerged Hancock Prospecting had a last-minute change of heart on its four-year partnership with netball, dropping a Saturday morning bombshell after four days of intense negotiations had appeared to end in agreement and a player back down.

Player and Netball Australia sources confirmed to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that the governing body and the miner were set to showcase a new Diamonds dress bearing the Hancock Prospecting logo on Saturday after reaching an agreement on Friday.

Australian captain Liz Watson in action against New Zealand in Auckland.Credit: Getty

The impasse had been resolved after Wallam, a 28-year-old Noongar woman and Queensland Firebirds shooter, had changed her mind and decided not to seek an exemption from wearing the uniform when she debuted against England later this month.

The announcement was set to go ahead when, on Saturday morning, Ryan took a call from a Hancock Prospecting staff member informing her the deal was off, and the company would be announcing as much in 10 minutes’ time.

Netball Australia’s search for financial stability, after announcing $7 million in losses over the previous two years, must begin again in earnest. Wallam’s soul-searching, done under immense pressure from all parties, was in vain.

“I think the uncertainty around the players actually supporting the partnership was ultimately the reason they withdrew,” Ryan said ahead of the Diamonds’ final Constellation Cup clash with New Zealand on Sunday night. “Despite reaching a resolution between all parties there was still the sense from Hancock Prospecting that things were not completely resolved.”

Donnell Wallam took issue with Hancock Prospecting’s netball sponsorship.Credit: Getty

Sources also told the Herald that Hancock Prospecting had made it clear at a Tuesday meeting they would not entertain an exemption for Wallam or her teammates on cultural grounds because to do so would amount to an admission the mining company had a problem with its record on Indigenous issues. A spokeswoman for the company declined to comment.

The company has been at pains to point out its track record of native title and employment agreements with the Pilbara communities in which it operates since the controversy started. In one of two statements published on Saturday, announcing the end of the Netball Australia deal, the company stated: “Mining is making a real difference to the people where we operate with Hancock and Roy Hill having contributed well in excess of $300 [million] to (sic) indigenous Australians in the form of royalty payments over the past seven years alone. Royalty payments represent only one part of our contribution to (sic) indigenous Australians, with our wider engagement extending to providing jobs, training, business opportunities and supporting a wide range of health and cultural programs, which make a real difference.”

Wallam, who dialled into that meeting on video link from Brisbane, further clarified to her employer during the week that her issue was with comments made in 1984 by the company’s founder, Lang Hancock. Hancock publicly supported sterilisation as a solution to what was referred to at the time as “the Aboriginal problem”.

Netball Australia chief executive Kelly Ryan says she has the support of her board.

Hancock’s daughter, Gina Rinehart, the executive chairman of the company and driving force behind the company’s foray into sport sponsorship, has never made any public comment about her late father’s views.

Sources close to Wallam said she was devastated by the Hancock Prospecting’s bombshell on Saturday. The players had tried to shield her from scrutiny and delay any meetings with Netball Australia executives until after the England series but, under extreme pressure, Wallam and her representative agreed to talk with Ryan on Thursday. Wallam then spoke to people from her community on Friday, sources said. By the afternoon she had let Netball Australia know she was prepared to wear the Hancock logo on her dress.

Ryan, Wallam, the Diamonds, their professional players association and Hancock Prospecting believed they’d found a way through, until Hancock Prospecting’s sudden announcement, which cited “the complexity of existing issues between Netball Australia and the Australian Netball Players’ Association”. It also took aim at sporting bodies being “used as the vehicle for social or political causes”.

One source inside the sport said on Sunday, “this deal was not meant to be”.

Ryan, who must mend a fractured relationship with the players’ association at the same time as shoring up netball’s shaky finances, said time would tell how the saga would affect the sports sponsorship arena.

“I think sport generally plays an important role in discussing and highlighting certain issues and sport has done that for a long time, from grassroots to the elite end, but it’s all about balance at the end of the day and you have to understand it needs to be a commercially viable sport,” she said.

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