The darkness at the heart of Australian netball still needs addressing

People say that time heals all wounds. Cliched though it may be, the saying is grounded in truth, as so many of these old adages are. None understand this better than athletes – whose livelihoods rely on quick healing, as they attempt to defy this need for time and hurry the process along.

Super Netball athletes have had their share of injuries over recent years and have experienced the agonising wait to get back out on court – from niggles that have necessitated a game on the sidelines to complex knee injuries setting players back two years. They don’t enjoy the wait, but they endure it, understanding the dangers of rushing back.

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This latest wound, though, is a deeper cut. It’s a blow that was dealt to all 80 players in the league simultaneously. The implosion of the relationship between Netball Australia and the Australian Netball Players’ Association that culminated in all players spending nine weeks off-contract and unable to be employed.

It is a relationship that has been rocky for some time now. The cracks first started to appear when the national body introduced critical rule changes just weeks out from the start of the season in 2020 without consultation, further widened when grand final hosting rights were sold in 2022 – again without consultation – before the Hancock Prospecting sponsorship disaster threatened to completely destroy the foundations.

The latest upheaval – as public and ugly as it may have been – is just one battle in an ongoing war and although there has now been pen put to paper on the new collective playing agreement, it is unlikely to be the end of the hostilities. While casual fans of the game may breathe a sigh of relief and expect netball to get back to business, sweeping aside all the bitterness and disagreement, there has been a severe breakdown of trust and a lot of work will be required to build it back up again.

It’s unlikely that this will be the turning point netball needs to put the focus once again on the extraordinary athleticism and skill displayed on court. There is a darkness at the heart of the sport that needs to be addressed before it can truly move on.

How can the players trust in a governing body that makes decisions without consulting or even notifying them? How do they return to “business as usual” with an organisation that fought tooth and nail to avoid offering them a share of revenue, who threatened legal action against its national team over attendance of an awards night? A signature on a piece of paper cannot heal the damage that has been done to this relationship and it is only a matter of time until the next disturbance threatens the foundations of the sport once again.

Former Australian Diamonds’ captain Liz Ellis expressed her doubts about whether the relationship can be healed in an Instagram post with almost 20,000 likes: “So yet again netball finds itself in the headlines for the wrong reasons – another crisis entirely of the sport’s own making. This has happened so often in recent times the question must be asked whether Netball Australia is capable of providing the leadership the sport so desperately needs.”

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For Ellis – who experienced her own share of altercations with the governing body during her playing days, including the threat of losing the captaincy during a similarly hostile contract negotiation – to publicly ask these questions highlights the extreme nature of the ruptured relationship. It is not simply a matter of putting the past behind them and moving on. To do so would only paper over the cracks that have formed and inevitably this will lead to further damage.

The news that up to $18m of federal government funding due to be allocated to netball was lost by the sport’s inability to provide a satisfactory business case for its use was yet another devastating blow to the sport and will only deepen the worries of the playing group about whether those at the helm are best placed to guide netball into the future. The Netball Australia chief executive, Kelly Ryan, has now resigned.

The wounds at the heart of this dispute are still raw – there will no doubt be a period of quiet now at the completion of this fight where these injuries will be tended to, and attempts made to repair the relationship and get the sport back on track. But while that old adage about time healing all wounds has its basis in fact, the real truth is that some wounds are too severe to heal at all. The signing of this agreement may seem like a significant step, but the damage has been done and we must now wait to see whether netball can survive it.