A Super Netball team backed by Australia’s most powerful football club could inexplicably fold after this season. In Part II of a special report, LINDA PEARCE reveals what caused the downfall.
Rob Wright knows his three years as assistant and then head coach of Collingwood netball were disastrous. Horrific, to use another favoured word. He acknowledges that he should never have gone there in the first place. And absolutely should not have taken over.
“The worst mistake I ever made in my career,’’ says Wright, who succeeded Kristy Keppich-Birrell in 2019 and was sacked after a devastating one-win season in 2020 in the Queensland hub.
“If I had my time again, I’d stay well clear. Even if they paid me double, I wouldn’t go. Never felt it was a good environment. So yeah, a disaster from my point of view to go there.’’
So, why did he?
“Oh, look, that’s a good question,’’ says the former NSW Swifts’ head coach, now an assistant with New Zealand club Northern Mystics and Jamaica’s Sunshine Girls.
“I certainly at the time was wanting something different. When the opportunity came up, I thought, ‘Oh, this could be really interesting’, because I thought being part of a team outside of a netball body would be really fascinating. And I should never have taken the head coach job. I knew it was a mistake. I knew the first week.’’
MORE: PART I: THE DYSFUNCTIONAL, DAMAGING BIRTH OF COLLINGWOOD NETBALL | MAGPIES SUPER NETBALL TEAM’S FUTURE IN THE BALANCE
Having been targeted, in part, because of his close relationship with defender Sharni Norder, who was dealing with mental health issues, there were also injuries, retirements, a pregnancy, personnel changes. Inflated egos. Amid what one 2018-listed player calls “a real jostling for power’’.
Add the off-court challenges of being part of Australia’s most famous football club, in what was an incredibly well-resourced netball program in some respects but stretched in others; one that has never truly flourished, regardless. One competing against a highly professional outfit, the VIS-backed and Netball Vic-owned Melbourne Vixens, keen to defend its turf.
Wright accepts full blame for the results, he says, having been on personal leave to help care for his dying mother when the Pies made a spirited run into the finals during the final three rounds of 2019 under co-caretakers Nicole Richardson and Kate Upton, before the annus horribilis of a Covid-compromised 2020.
“It was a perfect storm. Why it didn’t work was my fault,” he says. “At the end of the day, it was a failure. But it’s also fate. Everything happens for a reason. You look at yourself and go, ‘OK, well, how do I do things better? What would I do differently?’ I don’t blame other people. That’s all on me.’’
On joining the Auckland-based Mystics in 2021, Wright says he felt immediately welcomed and valued. He believes the best thing that happened during his time at Collingwood was the connection with Sunshine Girls Jodi-Ann Ward and Shimona Nelson, which led to his volunteer position with Jamaica.
One that almost helped to bring the Diamonds unstuck at last year’s Commonwealth Games and will continue at the World Cup in July.
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The two big signings of Wright’s first season in the top job, following a dismal seventh under Kristy Keppich-Birrell in 2018, were dual Sunshine Coast premiership pair Geva Mentor and Kelsey Browne, younger sister of Madi. Throw in Nat Medhurst, the triple world champion, and a trio of big names had just come to town. Or back to it, anyway.
Browne told CODE Sports last October in previously unpublished comments that she felt something special was “brewing” for the Pies in 2023, having returned from the Lightning premiership reunion and remembering while she was there both what a special group it was and how hard flags are to win.
She reflected on the challenges faced by her sister Madi, Caity Thwaites and other foundation players “trying to pave a way in a big club like Collingwood and it would have been so difficult’’; also the contrast between the stable, long-serving group led by Kate Moloney, Liz Watson, Jo Weston and Emily Mannix at her original team, the Vixens.
“They know each other like the back of their hand and they’ve had that core group together and it appears like they love each other, and they love the club and they love playing netball for the club, and I look at that and I go, ‘I think we are finding that at Collingwood’,’’ vice-captain Browne said ahead of her fifth season in black-and-white.
“I do think there’s a different vibe, but I think that’s come from people in our past having to do all of the hard work to get us to where we are now, to be honest, because it has been a tough few years.’’
It was time to come home when she did, says the Geelong-raised former Diamond, who nevertheless recognised how different Collingwood was from the Lightning; owned by the Melbourne Storm but based in more intimate surrounds two states away.
“It’s so big, the club is just so big and it employs so many people,” she continues. “And it’s just a juggernaut, and so finding your way in that space and especially being a new team … the club is so supportive, but it is trying to find your identity and I think with anyone, if you don’t have an identity, especially a sporting team, it’s really hard to know what you stand for, your brand, how you want to play.
“We’ve talked about it heaps: a team trying to find where they fit, not only in SSN as a new club, but as a club linked with a football team with a huge history.
“So I think it was about finding our identity and I think we’re getting closer and closer to that, and being able to pass that identity and that brand on to future teams is going to be really important, but you’ve got to have it, first.’’
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It seemed an odd alliance to begin with, frankly. The biggest AFL club in the land starting a netball offshoot was a feel-good throwback to the traditional footy-netball club days, powered by undeniably grand plans. What was unknown was that a women’s sport presence was about to arrive in the form of AFLW. But when the Super Netball contracts were confirmed, that was still a growing twinkle in Gillon McLachlan’s eye.
This, too, was the city of the Vixens and the land of member organisations, who can be almost jurassic in their turf-defending ways. As much as the five survivors of the disbanded trans-Tasman league needed three new siblings for their back-to-the-future family, and as keen as the Netball Australia management of the time was to involve cashed-up outsiders with high profiles, there was no real welcome.
Collingwood annoyed the old guard. The ways of the old guard frustrated Collingwood. Not a great basis for a shotgun marriage that had soured even before the wedding night.
There are differing opinions on how helpful/obstructive Netball Victoria and even Netball Australia have been, with one former insider claiming to have had no issues but another describing the two umbrella organisations as mean-spirited, defensive and narrow-minded.
Which, if true, did not help with the viability of a program that was always going to find it difficult competing with the entrenched rival club bankrolled by the state member organisation and its vast database of fee-paying participants; to which the Pies requested access and, to their disgust, were denied.
No crowd or membership numbers were made available to CODE Sports, but it was always painfully clear to Wright that Melbourne is a Vixens town and the inability to make any inroads into their support — helped by both history and success — was, and continues to be, an issue.
“(Collingwood) are a 130-year-old football club, trying to expand to be a global sports powerhouse,’’ he says. “But they never really garnered a strong fan base. They just upset everyone and got off on the wrong foot.’’
There are some parallels with the pre-Vixens days of the two previous Melbourne clubs: the blue-chip, establishment, all-conquering Phoenix that, well, rose from the ashes of the famed Melbourne Blue, and the less fashionable/successful Kestrels.
The pair were merged when the previous league was replaced by the trans-Tasman version for 2008. Flagged as a “super team”, it didn’t work instantly.
Sound familiar?
The difference was that, in a proud and passionate one-team town, premierships were delivered in 2009, 2014 and 2019 when personalities, structures and disciplines clicked into place.
Kestrels, interestingly, was the long-time home of Richardson, the current Pies coach. “I know back in the day when we were playing for Kestrels, we felt like the sister to Phoenix; not that I feel like that here, but it’s hard to be playing catch-up,’’ she says.
“Obviously Netball Victoria own Vixens, so (they receive) a lot of the dollars and when kids join to become a Netball Vic member, they’re just flooded and inundated with Vixens, Vixens, Vixens, so that’s a positive for them. But there’s also a massive positive for us to be aligned with an organisation like Collingwood Football Club.’’
Before CODE Sports broke news that CEO Craig Kelly on Tuesday met with stunned players and staff to advise them that the club’s existence in Super Netball from next season would be determined after working through issues with Netball Australia over the next seven days, one former player compared playing at a deserted John Cain Arena as not just cold and dispiriting but “flushing money down the toilet”.
If the licence is not surrendered and some sort of financial deal — perhaps involving the state government, given the parlous state of Netball Australia’s finances — brokered, Norder is among those who would support shifting games to the smaller State Netball Hockey Centre in Parkville (the Vixens’ training venue, incidentally) as an interim measure.
Or a relocation to Tasmania. Or fixtures in regional areas such as the Latrobe Valley. Neither of which would please FOX Sports, for obvious logistical and cost-related reasons, and only Option A seems remotely viable now should an unexpected reprieve somehow come.
“Even round one I was just like, ‘OK, something needs to change here. This is shit’,’’ Norder says. “I don’t know how many (fans) were there but on TV, the stadium was empty and I was like, ‘This is so bad for the sport’. If you’re FOX Netball, you do not give Collingwood a home first-round game, because it was just such a bad look.’’
Membership is problematic, too. It is understood that initially, the club was reluctant to market netball to its football members but, given that the Vixens were already supported by the vast majority of non-Pies types, that left little fan-love to spare. Existing staff, too, had more heaped on already-full plates and football was the priority, naturally, for it pays the bills.
“They’re massive, traditional AFL. That’s their core business, right? That’s where they make their money, where netball just drains them of money,’’ Wright says. “So it could have changed now, but I never felt there was that support there. At all.’’
More broadly, along with a lack of dedicated human resources, there was almost a Wizard of Oz-style smoke-and-mirrors element where all is not as it seems.
“The set-up of the club, it’s a big show,’’ one former player believes. “It you pull back the curtain, it’s actually not great.’’
Nevertheless, one former staffer is adamant that Collingwood could have got netball right and is saddened by what has transpired. “It could have succeeded but they just didn’t give it a chance. Too many non-netball people who insisted they knew better.’’
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The long list of players who failed to thrive during their time in black and white and/or left underwhelmed by the exit experience include Norder, Thwaites, Kim Ravaillion, Nat Butler (nee Medhurst) and Alice Teague-Neeld while, after an untidy end, Matilda Garrett is now a happy T-Bird and the newest addition to the national squad.
Recollections and theories differ slightly, of course, and several former Magpies can joke – with suitably black humour – that never being on the same page was a big part of the problem.
Thwaites, for example, believes Keppich-Birrell shouldered too much of the blame for the teething problems and the situation was far from clear-cut.
“It was a really tough time,’’ the ex-Diamond said after reading yesterday’s first CODE Sports instalment, with the fact she had thrived under the foundation coach borne out by first and second-place finishes in the best-and-fairest in her two years before the axe fell.
Thwaites went on to play in the Vixens’ 2020 premiership after a Pies exit that was horribly handled, about which she has previously spoken at length.
Brazill, who has endured but will retire from the sport after the final five games of this season, is among the exceptions, having successfully chased her Diamonds dream while also permitted to play her cherished AFLW in the multi-code environment. Imports Nelson and Ward have improved significantly. Brandley and both Browne sisters represented the Diamonds while at the club.
Kelsey is still there, and one of the better performers in a season that started with two wins in the first four rounds, a flogging from the Fever in Perth, plus the one that got away against the Vixens amid the centre pass controversy that may or may not have decided a one-goal game but was hugely dispiriting, regardless.
At the risk of another Vixens’ comparison, for they are two very different animals (or birds), former Diamonds coach Lisa Alexander, who was invited in to conduct training sessions, believes the elite standards and levels of accountability and expectation were vastly different across the two clubs.
Recruiting, too, remains a source of bewilderment to many on the outside. Former Swift Sophie Garbin, for instance, is a goal shooter, not a goal attack, yet was signed by a team already with a one-position GS in Nelson.
Garbin continues to struggle at GA, as does her team, generally, in attack. Indeed, Sunday’s loss against their nemesis, the Giants, was the Pies’ fifth straight, with finals now out of the question and the prospect of a second wooden spoon in four seasons. All players are coming off contract, as word filters out that the coaching staff is splintering, too.
Last month, Richardson declared Collingwood’s move into netball had been a success on the basis of three finals appearances in Super Netball’s first six years, while admitting to still being hungry for a title. On induction day to prepare for 2023, her presentation included an image of a spotlight shining down on an empty box, symbolising a home for a precious premiership cup.
“So we know that there is a piece of silverware that’s missing here and we’ve still got a lot of work to do, but that’s still a priority and that’s still something that’s definitely in my vision,’’ Richardson said, while adding that she was still courting more than scoreboard success.
“When I got the job, my first board presentation was (the desire) that people want to come to Collingwood. I want Collingwood to be the club of choice for our netball program. Not only for athletes in Victoria but Australia and international(ly), and also for support staff. I want athletes to come to our club. I want fans to come to our games.’’
Norder is still involved at the Pies, as the first female director on the board of the (football) past players’ association. She is also, after some initial trepidation about returning to a high-performance environment, back at the Vixens in a part-time defence specialist role and enjoying netball again.
While still doubting that the Magpies (netball) know where they fit.
“But then, the Thunderbirds haven’t been successful (in SSN), either,” she says. “And Firebirds haven’t been successful in the new league. So Collingwood aren’t the only ones. It’s just because they’re Collingwood that it stands out.’’
Across the ditch, Wright is glad to be out of what he thinks was part of a grand vision to build an all-conquering multi-sport family, without understanding what this unfamiliar adopted child required.
“I just think in reality they don’t get netball,’’ he says, with resignation rather than rancour. “They should have stuck to footy.’’
