Analysis: Netball Australia has a board vacancy but Liz Ellis would only consider filling it on one condition

Netball Australia’s finances and relationship with players are strained. Could Liz Ellis be a much needed circuit-breaker? LINDA PEARCE analysis.

Netball Australia has a board vacancy. The war-torn sport also has a former Diamonds’ captain and qualified lawyer who has forged a successful media and business career, but whose bid for a director’s seat earlier this year was rebuffed.

Will there be room at the inn for Liz Ellis now?

And, perhaps more pertinently, is Australia’s highest-profile netball figure even still trying to get in the door?

“I’d be very interested in having a conversation, but it would have to be part of a full board rejuvenation,’’ Ellis told CODE Sports following the news that Queenslander Jane Seawright is stepping down from the NA board after just over three years.

The vacancy created by the sudden departure of Seawright — an influential former Netball Queensland president who is one of just three elected directors (six, including one First Nations and one Athlete director, are appointed) — can be filled at NA’s discretion ahead of the scheduled election next May.

Understood to be unhappy in part that member state and territory organisation interests are not being prioritised, Seawright’s resignation comes at a challenging time for the governing body, with some interpreting it as the first crack in the timber of the board table.

Liz Ellis says she would be interested in joining the NA board. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

NA and the Super Netball clubs are headed to mediation with the players’ association, probably next week, over the Collective Player Agreement that expired and left all 80 contracted players effectively unemployed from October 1.

The first offer in this protracted dispute was made back in February.

It’s still going.

Sigh

To many the ideal replacement for current chair Wendy Archer, despite an unsuccessful dalliance with a private equity bid for SSN in 2022, Ellis this year expressed her interest in a board spot, but was informed in writing in May by Archer that current directors Gabbi Stubbs and Todd Deacon would have their terms extended, given “their particular skills and expertise, and following on from the recommendation from the NA Nominations Committee’’.

That prompted the woman who chaired NA’s extensive and well-received 2021 State of the Game Review, and now believes her best avenue for helping the sport is on the board, to declare: “Unfortunately at the moment there doesn’t seem to be any room for me at the inn.’’

Other insiders insist that the Nominations Committee could not consider Ellis without her making a formal application; the 50-year-old having not been put forward for consideration to a board that therefore had no alternative than to endorse the current directors. There was, however, an acknowledgement of not only Ellis’ netball expertise but skills and profile the sport needs.

Meanwhile, one of the State of the Game panel’s recommendations yet to be implemented by NA is for an independent chair of the aforementioned Nominations Committee. Which, previously, was Seawright.

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Netball HQ, helmed by chief executive Kelly Ryan, is grappling with issues big and small, from a fractured relationship with the players, represented by ANPA, to ongoing financial woes, having lost one of its SSN foundation clubs when Collingwood sensationally withdrew its licence in May.

At a micro level, a symbol of the difficulties with its most important stakeholder — the players — was the fact that only single invitations to next month’s Netball Awards were distributed to a cohort that includes the World Cup-winning Diamonds, who were told that a plus-one would cost them around $100.

Eventually, a partner/guest entitlement was negotiated as part of the recent Diamonds’ CPA — the only agreement signed off so far in a year of frustration for all parties, amid claims and counter-claims as part of a damaging division within the sport.

Talk to players, and the issues with management date back well before Ryan’s 2021 appointment as CEO. Specifically, a contentious 2020 decision by the now-disbanded Super Netball Commission headed by current board member Marina Go.

Netball Australia CEO Kelly Ryan is grappling plenty of issues. (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

Just six weeks from round one, rule changes headed by a two-point “Super Shot” for the last five-minutes of each quarter were announced – but without consulting those responsible for the implementation. As ANPA vice-president (now president) and star Diamonds/Vixens defender Jo Weston famously said at the time: “There are only so many bells and whistles on a bike before it becomes a clown car.’’

Last year, it was the surprise last-minute call to sell off the grand final, rather than reward the major semi-final winner with hosting rights - again, without involving the clubs. It was beside the point that the 2022 decider would ultimately have been played in Perth, anyway, and that the latest title match was a raging success in Melbourne in front of a sold-out John Cain Arena without a Victorian team in sight.

“As much as it annoys me that we still go back to that, it probably lays the foundation for where we feel as players at the moment,’’ says one of the multiple ANPA delegates/board members spoken to by CODE Sports.

“The trust isn’t necessarily there between (NA) and where us, as players, want the game to go … It’s just not knowing where the strategy is, or what direction NA are taking the sport, which obviously then is having impact on us in negotiations. It’s a bigger picture for me.’’

With the perceived lack of support during the Hancock Prospecting/Diamonds’ sponsorship stoush also still fresh, words used by the athletes to describe relations with NA include “rocky”, “disrespectful” and “like talking to a brick wall”. On the bargaining front, some feel spoken down to during meetings, and disappointed by how they believe they and the players’ association generally are spoken about elsewhere.

“It’s just casual things: the words they use or the tone they use when they talk to players or ANPA, compared to the way they talk to the clubs,’’ says one.

Adds another: “We’re fighting for it to be a partnership, a fair partnership, and at the moment it’s not. We’re seen as employees, not the product. But without us there’d be no World Cup trophy, no sponsors…’’

Have the players lost trust in Netball Australia? (Photo by Kelly Defina/Getty Images)

At a previous NA awards dinner, players arrived to find themselves not seated with teammates to enjoy the celebration of their year, but next to sponsors, “so we could schmooze. It wasn’t ‘You’re the product, this is your night, enjoy it’.’’

Multiple sources have indicated that one dissatisfied Diamond was part of a robust conversation with an NA representative at the World Cup after-party in Cape Town, and it seems that assertiveness is also filtering down through the ranks elsewhere.

According to one ANPA delegate/director: “It’s got to the point where on meetings even I’ve been more direct than I would have been before just because it’s wanting our voices to be heard and probably just craving a bit of that respect.’’

Not only did the Diamonds not receive any prize money for a 12th World Cup win (because that is not how netball works), nor was there even a small Silver Ferns-style bonus when they returned. Nor, as yet, has there been a public reception/celebration, which Ryan says is in the works now that the players have returned from their breaks.

Yet Netball NSW, owner of the Swifts and Giants, organised a function at Sydney’s Parliament House on September 22 attended by corporate partners, staff, life members, families and politicians including premier Chris Minns and sports minister Steve Kamper.

It celebrated the achievements of gold-medal-winning Diamonds’ trio Paige Hadley, Sarah Klau and Jamie-Lee Price, as well as umpires and other NNSW-connected World Cup players and coaches such as Helen Housby, Jo Harten, Briony Akle, Mo’onia Gerrard and Romelda Aiken-George.

At least one Diamonds has made their greivances known. (Photo by Russell Freeman/Getty Images)

On the domestic front, senior figures were riled when Ryan flagged last week that NA would bypass ANPA to present its case directly to the athletes in order to get their proposals properly heard; critics musing how such tactics would go down on a building site or other highly-unionised industry.

Still, asked about NA’s relationship with its players, Ryan told CODE Sports: “I would suggest that the majority of players have a pretty clear understanding as to what the sport is trying to achieve, and where we’re going.

“We have relationships on varying degrees with players, considering most of them are actually employed by the teams.

“We obviously have players in the Diamonds environment, which we work more closely with than we do with all the other players, but we spend a great deal of time trying to communicate to them, either in person, or in their team environment, so I think our relationship is as strong as it needs to be.’’

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The big-ticket item in the current stare down, of course, is the players’ demand for a hybrid revenue share model of above-forecast sponsorship, versus NA’s position that anything more than a profit-share system in which it keeps the first $500,000 is unaffordable.

Either way, given the sport’s troubled financial state, the amounts are small; barring an unforeseen windfall, no boost to the bottom line is expected until the next broadcast rights deal at the end of 2026.

Who blinks first and how long it takes will be determined through mediation, non-binding as it is, while other issues still to be resolved include the pay and conditions for the one probable rookie per team (but more on that another day).

Few argue that, combined with unlimited imports, lists of 10 — changeable only in the event of illness/injury — are too small in a pathway sense as rival leagues circle elite talents and start to pay them better, just as there is a need for more than eight teams.

Interestingly, one concern among clubs is the perceived appetite for more private ownership — as opposed to investment, which is sorely needed — than the current two franchises owned by the Melbourne Storm (Sunshine Coast Lightning) and SEN (the Magpie-replacing Melbourne Mavericks).

Shae Bolton-Brown, General Manager, Netball Operations Of Melbourne Mavericks. Picture: Jason Edwards

While not in itself necessarily a bad thing, there needs to be a way to protect the member organisations whose dollar losses on investments propped up by the grassroots are in the many millions. Security, clearly, was a factor in the push for licences to be granted in perpetuity in the next round of Team Participation Agreements that may finally be signed off within days.

Which, perhaps, brings us back to Jane Seawright’s unexpected exit.

NA Chair Wendy Archer did not respond to requests for comment, so there is no official explanation, and nor an indication of whether there will now be an independent chair of the board’s nominations committee to alter the system that thwarted the game’s biggest name five months ago.

As the host of Gladiators, among multiple other media and business interests, Ellis has no shortage of projects. Yet, if the will remains, it now also seems that nothing less than “full board rejuvenation” will entice her to again knock on the door of the inn.

Originally published as Analysis: Netball Australia has a board vacancy but Liz Ellis would only consider filling it on one condition