Super Netball mood improving as players get to grips with isolation training

The mood around Super Netball has changed dramatically in recent weeks to one of cautious optimism about the future.

NSW Swifts players Helen Housby, left, and Sam Wallace, have set up a makeshift training facility on the balcony of the flat they share in Sydney. Picture: John Feder

It’s been almost two years to the day since England’s Helen Housby wrote her name in netball history with a gold medal-winning shot after the final siren of the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.

Now Housby is restricted to taking shots on the balcony of her Sydney flat, where she has set up a makeshift gym with housemate and fellow NSW Swift Sam ­Wallace.

The 2020 Super Netball season was scheduled to begin at the start of May, but that has been pushed back to July at the earliest by coronavirus restrictions.

The mood around the league has shifted dramatically over the past three weeks from widespread anxiety about the future to a new modest optimism as teams settle into new routines.

“It was a pretty hard, confronting initial period, for everybody really,” Melbourne Vixens coach Simone McKinnis recalls.

NSW Swifts head coach Briony Akle says: “It’s been a lot more manageable than I would have thought before all this happened. But I think we’ve got a pretty committed team off the court, making it happen behind-the-scenes.’’

Her focus has been on keeping her players connected and upbeat. The team have been meeting online together for spin and yoga classes, and host a trivia competition every Tuesday night. “The struggle for me is just that mental space, that they are all positive and know that this is going to end,” Akle says.

The biggest challenge coaches have spoken about has been pacing player fitness with no idea when competition might ­resume.

The Vixens have developed three separate training models based on different season launch dates, with an eye to changing tack as the situation changes.

McKinnis admits that the unknowns in this environment “can drive you crazy”, but she has encouraged her players to just focus on the week ahead. “You just look at this week, then next week. And when we find out, we find out.”

On the Sunshine Coast, Super Netball’s newest head coach Kylee Byrne has suddenly found herself managing a difficult debut season after three years spent as an assistant at the Lightning. “It was a great year to take a position like this wasn’t it? We quite often joke that I got my dream job and now I can’t do it at the moment,” Byrne laughs.

Byrne is proud of the collaborative spirit that netball has shown in negotiating pay cuts and taking difficult decisions without any of the ugly fighting seen in Australia’s larger football codes.

“It’s just been this real sense of ‘we love our game, we don’t want it to die, and we’ll do whatever we can to make sure it happens’,” she says. Those sacrifices have been very difficult for Super Netball players, with a 70 per cent pay cut across the board reducing the minimum wage to almost $10,000 a year. That’s left many players applying for any casual work they can find as the league tries to negotiate for government support through the JobKeeper program. All three coaches said that while some players have needed more time to adjust to life in isolation, most were extremely enthusiastic when training resumed this week after a two-week hiatus.

“There are some that are certainly crying out for it, and want to feel that they haven’t forgotten what they know and what their job is,” Byrne explains. But there are some things that no amount of video conferencing and home gym equipment can ­replace.

When the Vixens added some agility drills to this week’s training, rangy Jamaican defender Kadie-Ann Dehaney admitted that she missed McKinnis yelling at her to “go harder” from the sideline.

The coach’s response?

“Hey I can make a recording of it ‘KD’, you can carry it around with you!”