Advent of Super Netball creates new opportunities

The expansion of the game this year under Super Netball created 21 extra on-court opportunities every round.

Sunshine Coast Lightning’s Laura Scherian, right, has taken her opportunity this season with both hands. Picture: Gregg Porteous

The expansion of Australia’s top-flight netball from five to eight teams this year under Super ­Netball created 21 extra on-court ­opportunities every round for its players, or 294 matches across the inaugural 2017 season.

But there’s been no dilution of talent, with plenty of fresh faces in the league’s finals campaign that begins today.

When Laura Scherian takes the court for the Sunshine Coast Lightning this afternoon in the side’s major semi-final against the Melbourne Vixens, it will mark another key step in a remarkable comeback for the midcourt ­dynamo.

Before this season, Scherian hadn’t played a game of elite netball since 2010, when she was with the Queensland Firebirds. She spent those six years carving a new career as a naturopath in Brisbane while working her way up to ­captaining the state’s feeder team, Queensland Fusion.

Although she often trained with the Firebirds, Scherian says she never had the sense that she was on the cusp of return to top-flight competition.

Then she got an “extremely surprising” phone call from coach Noeline Taurua inviting her to join the new Lightning side on the Sunshine Coast.

The No 10 on Scherian’s dress indicates that she was the final player signed by the team, but that hasn’t held her back. She has ­started in 12 of the Lightning’s 14 matches, forming a dangerous combination with Kiwi star Laura Langman and fellow Victorian expat Kelsey Browne.

Browne is another player ­thriving in an expanded role at the Lighting, having spent two ­seasons competing with her sister and fellow wing attack Madi ­Robinson at the Vixens.

Madeline McAuliffe, a Queensland talent, has been ­another regular contributor despite being one of the league’s 26 debutants this season.

This is also the first season in Australia for the Lightning’s hard-nosed goal defender, Karla Mostert, a South African with 53 test caps under her belt. And then there’s the team’s captain and goalkeeper, English veteran Geva Mentor, one of netball’s most ­admired figures, who was only offered a part-time role at a Vixens side focused on youth after her sixth season in Melbourne.

Mentor, 32, has excelled in her first stint as a skipper, leading the Lightning to equal first on the ladder — only missing out on a minor premiership due of percentage — and putting together an MVP calibre season. Her exit has provided Emily Mannix with a starting bib after two seasons on the bench, and four in the developmental Australian Netball League. Vixens coach Simone McKinnis has a strong focus on developing her own talent in house, and Mannix has shouldered a massive load for the team in her first season as a starter.

If there were any nerves in making the jump, the goalkeeper didn’t show them. Instead she was focused on taking a position that’s long been a strength at the Vixens and making it her own. It’s clearly been a success. Mannix has shouldered a huge load in her first ­season as a starter, winning a best on court MVP award in the ­Vixens’ round four win over the West Coast Fever.

In Sydney, the new Giants team used its expansion as a chance to bring NSW talent home. The first step was signing up Julie Fitzgerald, a beloved ­figure who founded the NSW Swifts, but spent the past three years in New Zealand.

Fitzgerald was determined to build a team around a core of local talent, signing eight Sydney players to her ten-woman roster. One of those was Sam Poolman, a Newcastle girl who had been forced to play interstate since 2011.

When Julie offered Sam a position at the Giants, she cried, overwhelmed by the fact that she was finally able to head home. “A Sydney-based team was something that I’d always dreamed of playing for,” says Poolman. The goal keeper credits playing home as a big factor behind her breakout 2017 season, as well as the strong play of defensive partners Bec Bulley and Jamie-Lee Price.

Bulley was happily retired and focused on her family before being invited to join the Giants, one of four mothers to play Super Netball this year. Price, the daughter of rugby league legend Steve, was able to return to Australia after four seasons playing in New Zealand, mostly under the tutelage of Julie Fitzgerald.

They’ve both enjoyed strong seasons at the Giants, Bulley reaffirming her reputation as one of the nation’s best goal defenders after 18 months away from the sport, and Price emerging as a ­certainty to start for Australia’s 21 and under side this year.

Today they take on a Magpies side that is also stocked with local players finally given the chance to return home to Victoria.

Shae Brown grew up in ­Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, and joined the now defunct Melbourne Kestrels at 15. But after two seasons a lack of opportunities drove her interstate, spending a year at the AIS before heading to Perth to start a new life playing for the Fever.

The formation of the Magpies presented Brown and her husband Mitch — a former AFL player — with a tough choice: moving home almost certainly also meant sacrificing salary and court time on a loaded Magpies team. Ultimately, the chance of success after a long time at the struggling Fever tipped the scales, she says.

But joining the Magpies also reunited Brown with former Kestrels Madi Robinson, Sharni Layton and Caitlin Thwaites, who all roved around Australia during their careers. It hasn’t been a smooth launch for Collingwood, which began the season heavily favoured but struggled early and finished in fourth. But those inside the team insist that it has turned a corner, having won six out of its final seven matches.

Brown has spent much of the season on the bench before being thrust into an unfamiliar role at goal attack, an opportunity she’s relished. “If someone had said this might be the opportunity that I’d be handed even three months ago, I would have laughed and said in my dreams, because I always saw myself as a closet goal attack but never got the opportunity.”

As she sees it, expansion is ­providing even the league’s experienced players a chance to broaden their game and seize chances that couldn’t have been possible in a five team league.

Brown says that she tells every junior netballer how much she wishes that she was their age today. “It’s not just netball, it’s women’s sport in general. There are just so many opportunities now. I see so much talent in ­Victoria, and I think it won’t be very long before we see these girls running out in Magpies colours or Vixens colours.”

Poolman takes the point further, arguing that the benefits of netball’s expansion, and that new ability to retain home grown talent, extend far beyond the extra players on the court today.

“At the end of the day I was that young girl that looked up to the Hunter Jaegers at the time, and the Swifts, and for use to now represent that pathway, and that we have played for those teams that these girls are striving to make really shows that they can do it.”