The Netty Life

On a special bonus episode of The Netty Life, we catch up with Jillian Joyce, business owner of Pride Human Performance in Townsville and Head coach of the North Queensland Netball Academy.

Jillian is one of the best netball brains in NQ.

In this candid interview, we chat about the role she plays in uncovering netball talent up north, the growth of the men’s game, how her team are breaking down the stigma that is still associated with women’s health in the high-performance arena, her support of Sharon Finnan-White’s First Nations Academy of Excellence, and how Sharon and the athletes in that program have changed Jillian’s life.

The Aussie Diamonds have asserted their dominance early in the greatest trans-Tasman rivalry in sport.

After taking a 2-0 lead on home soil, the Constellation Cup tour now heads to New Zealand for the final two matches.

Meanwhile, in the men’s, the Aussie Kelpies have done the same in their Trans-Tasman Cup. Securing the trophy for another year with one game left to play in Auckland.

We analyse all the games so far and also provide an update on the Super Netball CPA dispute, as Netball Australia and the ANPA agree to enter mediation.

As the Diamonds gear up to face their fiercest rivals, the Silver Ferns, so do their Aussie and New Zealand male counterparts.

For a second year running, the Trans-Tasman Cup will be played as a double header alongside the women’s Constellation Cup, with all matches to be televised.

The Australian team will debut its new name – the Kelpies – when they hit the court Thursday for Game 1, after a long time between games and a lot of training.

Here to help us preview the men’s series and share some of his netball story is midcourter Riley Richardson.

We hope you enjoy hearing more about his career!

It has been a while since our last podcast, and some tension is brewing in the Australian Netball scene. We discuss the growing unease between Netball Australia and the Australian Netball Players Association (ANPA) as Super Netball players are currently left without income due to the CPA that is yet to be finalised.

We also discuss the upcoming Constellation Cup that starts in Melbourne on October 12th, which is set to be a thrilling event as it marks the 500th international game for the Diamonds, who will be facing off against their arch-rivals, the Silver Ferns. The four-game series promises to be a hotly contested tournament, with the Silver Ferns looking to prove their worth as the second-world ranked team despite their fourth-place finish at the recent World Cup in South Africa.

After the old Super Netball collective player agreement lapsed on September 30 without the Australian Netball Players’ Association and Netball Australia reaching an agreement on a new one, all 80 athletes in the league have been off contract without pay now for 10 days.

Despite negotiations starting way back in February, the two parties have not been able to see eye-to-eye and have now gone public with their versions of each side of the story.

Without a CPA in place none of the eight Super Netball teams can start contracting their players for 2024, making it hard to start planning their pre-seasons.

It’s been a complex issue for many netball fans to get their heads around, so we caught up with Netball Australia CEO Kelly Ryan and former ANPA vice president Maddy Colebrook (nee McAuliffe) to hear what they had to say.

If you enjoyed this bonus episode, please leave us a review or share the episode with your friends!

Collingwood Super Netball head coach Nicole Richardson has been to hell and back this year.

Her side were made defunct six weeks before the end of the Super Netball season, where they finished with their second-ever wooden spoon and won their last two home games in an emotional and bittersweet farewell.

Then she won the Netball World Cup in South Africa with the Diamonds as an assistant coach, standing on the podium alongside five Pies players.

Beyond this, Richardson witnessed Collingwood’s development team win another ANC title in the netball club’s last hurrah.

In this chat, Richardson reflects on her overall time with the Pies, where it all went wrong for the club and her frustrations playing second-fiddle to their football department.

Richardson also shares where she plans to head next and what advice she would give the new SEN-owned team replacing the Pies in the Super Netball league for 2024.

In an exclusive interview, the Netty Life catch up with Diamond #105 Sharon Finnan-White who is about to launch her new initiative, The Sharon Finnan-White First Nations Academy of Excellence (FNAE).

We also hear from two athletes playing in the 2023 Indigenous Diamonds squad (coached by Finnan-White), Tenisha Solomon and Sonny Anne Ragget.

The Australian Diamonds win the Netball World Cup in Cape Town for the 12th time to take back the last elusive trophy missing from their cabinet.

The England Roses had a historic tournament finishing with their first silver medal, the Jamaican Sunshine Girls left with bronze and the New Zealand Silver Ferns failed to medal for the first time in the 60-year history of the tournament, solidifying their worst performance at a World Cup.

Should alarm bells be ringing across the ditch?

The Adelaide Thunderbirds are the Super Netball champions for 2023 after defeating the Swifts in the grand final by just one goal in extra time in a match that will live on in Super Netball folklore. We discuss the impact Roses import and buy of the year, Eleanor Cardwell, has had in her first season with the Thunderbirds and the high penalty count for the usually disciplined Swifts that may have been the difference in such a tight contest.

We discuss the new match rules that are being proposed in Cape Town later in the month, which are welcome adjustments to the ones currently in place. We also catch up with former Australian Diamonds captain, Laura Geitz, who gives us her thoughts on the grand final and how she thinks the Diamonds will fair at upcoming Netball World Cup.

The grand final dreams of West Coast Fever were stolen from their grasp in the dying moments of the preliminary final by the NSW Swifts, who will now battle the Adelaide Thunderbirds for the 2023 Super Netball trophy.

We analyse how agonisingly close Fever came to having a shot at back-to-back titles and how teenager Sophie Fawns proved to be the game changer for the Swifts with hot hands during the super shot period.

For the second time this season we welcome back Dr Alan Pearce, neuroscientist, to discuss an incident concerning Sasha Glasgow, who was diagnosed with concussion after colliding with the post.