Margot Vella on hunt for new NRLW club after horrific knee injury prompted Dragons exit
A breakdown in communication between the Dragons and management left Margot Vella without a club. However, the injured star who suffered ACL and MCL injuries in the same incident isn’t giving up on her NRLW dream.
NRLW star Margot Vella has been left without a club for 2026 months after suffering a brutal knee injury that ended her season with St George Illawarra.
The 26-year-old suffered a ruptured ACL as well as a PCL, MCL and meniscus damage during a Magic Round loss to Parramatta back in August.
The injury occured just days after a club-imposed deadline lapsed on a two-year contract extension with the Dragons for the 2026 and 2027 seasons.
One of the Dragons’ best throughout the early season, she bravely stayed on the field for around 15 minutes with a shattered knee before coming off.
However, the injury came as a horrible timing for the gun centre, who now faces an uncertain future and up to 12 months of recovery as she rehabilitates the awful foursome of knee issues.
“I definitely want to play next year,” she told The Daily Telegraph.
“(My manager and I) haven’t had the chance to talk about what my options are yet.
“But I’ll be looking around now, the NRLW is still the dream despite everything.
“I have to find a new home and hopefully a new club will take me in. I’m going to keep training hard and it only fuels the fire to come back and be even better.
“It’ll push me to get out of my comfort zone.”
NEGOTIATION BREAKDOWN
To make matters worse, the injury and missed deadline has now caused a rift between Vella and the Dragons, where she has spent the past three seasons of her NRLW career.
Vella says she was assured by the club on several occasions, and as recently as October, that they were looking to contract her for the 2027 season.
It would give her 2026 to completely recover and return through the NSW competition.
But after attempts to secure written confirmation, her management received an email from the Dragons explaining they would not be pursuing any interest in Vella for 2027.
And furthermore, she would not be permitted to train with the club in 2026.
She said it has left her feeling blindsided.
“Half of me is gutted because when I did my injury, I played on, I didn’t come off, I put my body on the line for that club and I really loved it there,” she says.
“But half of me is excited to get away from all of the drama and start fresh.
“I don’t know exactly how the whole contracting world works, but I was not expecting this.”
For their part, the Dragons have denied making any promises to her about her future at the club, saying it wouldn’t be good business practice while she’s rehabilitating such a serious injury and doesn’t yet have a return to play date.
They did value Vella enough to offer her a two-year extension at the beginning of the season. But when negotiations fell through, they moved on, unsure whether she wanted to be there, and assuming she had interest at another club.
Regardless, Vella is wearing the consequences for the breakdown in communication.
The Dragons are responsible for her knee rehabilitation, but beyond that they have moved on to other options to fill their squad.
It leaves Vella on the hunt for a new club, and she’s confident she can return to play by the start of the season in July and hoping to reach the same heights she hit this season.
Although primarily a winger, in her final game against the Eels she played fullback, running for 201 metres and scoring a try as well as nine tackle breaks and two line breaks.
Since coming across to the NRLW in 2023 from NSW Waratahs, she played 15 games and scored nine tries, and proved herself a fierce competitor.
THE INJURY
There was nothing magic about it.
It’s been 17 weeks since Vella’s knee practically exploded after her boot was caught in the turf at McDonald Jones Stadium in the last game of a wet weekend in Newcastle.
It was the first women’s Magic Round, and as it turns out, her last game for the club.
A slow recovery has followed since.
She spent six weeks healing the MCL injury before having surgery to repair her ruptured ACL, all while sitting at home in Leppington in a dark place.
“The two weeks after surgery was pretty horrendous, learning all the basics again,” she says.
“Now it’s going really quickly though, I’m getting to do new things every week and it’s coming along really good. It feels good, so hopefully get to do some more interesting stuff.
“A bit of running soon, which is sooner than expected. We’ll see.”
Quad testing is next before she’s cleared to run, and she’s eyeing off a return to the field at the start of next season, which kicks off in early July.
“I’m pretty positive I’ll be able to find another club, I want to play, it’s always the goal. I’m hoping my past self has proved enough that someone will want to pick me up.”
ON THE JOB
In the meantime she’s busied herself with work for the family business, Speedy’s Seedlings and Supplies, which is a wholesale nursery run by her dad John and her mum Sandy.
They’re a tight-knit team, and John is her biggest fan.
John moved to the farm when he was four, and their family has been working the land there ever since.
Although she’s not back to full-time yet, Vella does a bit of everything, including working in the lab on research and development, all with her beloved kelpie Joey by her side.
Her favourite job is driving the tractor, but she doesn’t trust herself enough to drive just yet.
“It’s a wholesale seedling nursery, we start veggies from seed to seedling, we load them up onto racks which then go onto the trucks and then truck them out to our customers who grow them out fully and that’s when they go into the commercial side of things,” she explains.
“First couple of weeks after surgery I wasn’t working at all.
“And when I started to work on light duties it was working from home, doing some laptop admin and learning that side of things, and then coming in and slowly building up my hours.
“I’m still not full-time yet. Doing whatever I can do.”
Originally published as Margot Vella on hunt for new NRLW club after horrific knee injury prompted Dragons exit
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