Nat Medhurst bears battle scars but leaves netball an important off-court legacy

In many ways, Nat Medhurst is the opposite of everything netball stands for. While netball is polite and quiet, Medhurst is determined and loud. While netball is all about maintaining the status quo, Medhurst is a trailblazer for change. While netball is secretive, Medhurst is open and honest.

After 17 years in the elite netball environment, through three iterations of the national league – including 235 national league caps – and 86 appearances for the Australian Diamonds, she has finally called time on her career.

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It is a career that has been far from straightforward. A typical elite netball player might follow a path similar to the steeplechase – plenty of flat track with the occasional hurdle to navigate – but Medhurst’s was more akin to a narrow, winding route through a dark and terrifying jungle. That she has emerged from this journey as one of Australia’s greatest players of all time is to her immense credit. She leaves behind a legacy of incredible playmaking and a revolution of the goal attack position. But it is off the court where her loss will hit the hardest.

When Medhurst took on the role as president of the Australian Netball Players’ Association in 2018, she brought to the role both a wealth of experience and a refusal to accept second best. In 2019 she used a split lip that forced her from the court to agitate for change in the match review process. In 2020, while on maternity leave, she continued her role with the players’ association, stepping up to question the introduction of the super shot rule change that was brought in without consultation of the players.

She has been shaped by adversity – after being forced out of the Adelaide Thunderbirds while she was regularly a starting player for the Diamonds, she reinvented herself at the Queensland Firebirds. She spoke with Neroli Meadows earlier this year about the mental health challenges she faced over the next few years, suffering from an eating disorder and suicidal ideation while continuing to play netball at the highest level.

Emerging from that period of her life as a stronger, more stable person, she was dealt twin blows in 2017, with the breakdown of her marriage and unexpectedly being dropped from the Diamonds. Though she was offered the opportunity to retire internationally rather than reveal that she had been dropped, in typical Medhurst style, she chose not to take it. She was not ready to retire from the team she had given so much to and did not want the opportunity to make a return to be taken from her.

At the end of the 2018 season when she was again forced from a club to which she had given her heart and soul, she had to draw on her unending reserves of strength and decide where this journey would take her next. With the support of partner Samuel Butler, she chose to forge on along this difficult terrain, relocating to Melbourne and taking up an opportunity with the Collingwood Magpies.

Throughout all these challenges, it was Medhurst’s reactions that set her apart from her peers. Rather than dodge questions about the setbacks and offer platitudes about her new opportunities, she confronted issues and spoke openly about how it felt to be let down by teams and coaches to whom she had shown so much loyalty.

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She has demonstrated it is not necessary for players to stay quiet when hardships befall them. and that they do not need to simply be grateful for the opportunities they have been given. Rather, they can speak up when they are not treated the way they deserve to be. In a sport with an expectation of ‘ladylike’ behaviour, Medhurst has been willing to use her voice where others have stayed silent.

While the hole she leaves on the court will be filled in time – though not with ease at her struggling club – there are questions that netball must ask itself about why there are so few players who are comfortable taking on the off-court role she played. Will the next player who speaks her mind so freely be forced to navigate such a difficult path or have lessons been learnt about the benefits of having a diversity of opinion in the sport?

Now at the end of this journey, Medhurst walks away a legend of the sport. She bears the scars of a long and difficult battle, but takes with her the triumph of leaving the sport in a better place than it was 17 years ago. Where her path takes her next and the future impact she may have on Australian sport is not yet known, but one thing is certain – wherever she goes, she will not go quietly.