The Australian Diamonds are unaccustomed to having a bare trophy cabinet. Although they hold the Quad Series trophy, it is little comfort after failing to secure Commonwealth Games gold in 2018 and the Netball World Cup in 2019. Even the Constellation Cup (often dubbed the Consolation Cup) is in the hands of New Zealand.
The naming of the latest squad this week marks the first step in the journey to refill the trophy cabinet. The 18-player list named on Thursday will later be cut to 12 who will board the plane to Birmingham. It’s not impossible for players outside that 18 to force their way into the final team through outstanding performances in Super Netball, but it would be very unusual. Most likely it will be from these 18 players that coach Stacey Marinkovich needs to find a core with the golden glow about it.
The team has its locks of course – captain Liz Watson and vice-captain Steph Wood, as well as the electric Gretel Bueta and defensive stalwart Courtney Bruce. Those players can safely start searching for their passports and trying to remember what happens on an international flight.
But in naming the squad on Thursday evening, the selectors spoke about finding something elusive – the invisible threads that weave their way through the team and bring everything together. Someone who brings that enigmatic quality is 28-year-old Super Netball rookie Donnell Wallam, who was brought into the Queensland Firebirds set-up as a late replacement for pregnant shooter Romelda Aiken-George.
The Noongar woman from Harvey in Western Australia played a season in the English Super League competition before coming home to Australia for a shot at a Super Netball contract. While she was impressive in her elite netball debut in the UK, the Australian competition is widely regarded as the best in the world and represents a significant step up. Wallam has been able to make that step with relative ease, matching up on some of the world’s best goal keepers during the first five rounds of competition.
She is a unique prospect among the other shooters in the squad because she has the ability to play a strong holding game. Since the recent retirements of Caitlin Bassett and Caitlin Thwaites, Australia has favoured a moving circle, where both the goal attack and goal shooter make space for each other and use the whole circle. A holding goal shooter however, dominates the space around the post and the goal attack takes on more of a playmaker role in setting up that space. While a moving circle, if used well, can make it very difficult for opposition defenders, a good holding shooter is often a “get out of jail free” card and gives a team the ability to score quickly.
Plenty of tall, holding shooters have been tried over the years in an attempt to uncover the successors to Bassett and Thwaites, but on the whole they have been one dimensional. Players such as Emma Ryde, Kristina Brice and Jane Cook have had stints in Super Netball over the years, but they quickly became illustrations of why height and shooting accuracy isn’t enough to make it in the cutthroat competition. Wallam’s ability to think on her feet, to outfox defenders and work in combination with her teammates elevates her holding skills and makes her a genuine contender at the highest level.
Off the court, Wallam’s Noongar roots illustrate the problems that Netball Australia has had with a lack of Indigenous inclusion. This became particularly stark when Jemma Mi Mi – at the time the only Indigenous player in the competition – failed to take the court during Super Netball’s Indigenous Round in 2020. The fact that Wallam becomes only the third Indigenous player to make the Diamonds squad after Sharon Finnan-White and Marcia Ella-Duncan, and the first in over 20 years is conspicuous, especially considering she had to travel to the UK to effectively catch the attention of selectors in Australia.
Following her elevation to the national squad on Thursday, Wallam acknowledged the importance of role models and mentors for First Nations women and made plain her desire to be a visible role model for the generations to come. “It’s an incredible achievement and one that I’m just so very proud of,” she said. “I just hope that I can inspire our First Nations athletes to keep following their dreams now, seeing I made the squad. Marcia and Sharon, I just want to thank them for paving the way and pay tribute how I can.”
Wallam’s inclusion is an exciting one and the key talking point of this squad, but it can’t completely distract from the questions that arise across other areas of the court. From squad balance – seven shooters have been named compared to five defenders – to midcourt management. Wallam’s teammate at the Firebirds Kim Ravaillion has not been named in the squad since returning to netball after the birth of her first child, despite the fact that she has been in sparkling form for the past two seasons. There has been little given in the way of explanation for her consistent exclusion.
Like all Diamonds squads before it, this is a group brimming with talent. Every one of the 18 players named is hard-working and highly accomplished. But Australian netball is not interested in talented players trying their best and falling short. What now needs to be discovered is: who among this group holds the tiny invisible threads that can be woven together to create something golden.
