Coach Tracey Neville has opened up on the “massive cloud” that devastating injuries placed on the Melbourne Mavericks in their inaugural Super Netball season.
The Mavs never fielded their 10 contracted players in the same game in the club’s debut year – with duo Sasha Glasgow and Lauren Parkinson (nee Moore) unable to feature at all.
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Both were injured in the pre-season, with Neville admitting Glasgow’s horror leg break was particularly devastating given how the injury occurred.
“We’ve reflected on the massive lows we’ve had within the team,” Neville told Fox Netball’s Off the Court.
“Publicly to only have someone like Sasha Glasgow in our team for two weeks … (her injury) wasn’t done in private, in a training environment – it was done with our first crowd, in our home training venue.
“The emergency services took 60 minutes – so that was 60 minutes of trying to support an athlete who’d just literally broke her leg in front of what we were trying to do – a fun engaging event where we were to attract people to the Mavericks.
“That put a massive cloud over the team, just the emotional cloud.
“Last year, every time someone mentioned that (Glasgow injury) it was heartbreaking to think one person we’d just gotten to know had to go through that.
“Obviously we had Lauren Moore (injure her ACL) at Team Girls Cup in the final game for the wooden spoon … against her old team as well.
“I think I cried in front of the team – I think everyone cried in front of the team.”
The injury crisis didn’t end there with both Molly Jovic and English import Eleanor Cardwell also missing matches during 2024.
But Neville was adamant the “massive highs” of the debut season – and her will to win, made the move to coach the Mavericks worth it.
“If I didn’t sit here and I say I wanted to win, I shouldn’t be in this job,” she said.
“That became really difficult as the year went on (to win games) – we obviously lost Jovic for three games, Cardwell for six games; we didn’t beat a top three team.
“Everything was new to us – we were creating history
“I actually said to my partner Michael, ‘Why do I do this?’. He went, ‘Tracey, ever since I’ve known you, when it’s comfortable you get bored’. I said, ‘I’d like some comfortable’.
“I didn’t come out and coach in the best league in the world to ever feel comfortable.”
Neville couldn’t have been handed a more uncomfortable start to her Super Netball head coaching career, after leaving an assistant position with the Adelaide Thunderbirds for the Mavericks role.
The former England head coach arrived at a time when the Super Netball CPA was unsigned – meaning she could not recruit players to the newly formed club that replaced the Collingwood Magpies.
“Going in to the season, we probably only got eight weeks with the whole of the team and during that eight weeks we encounter two serious injuries which we obviously weren’t expecting which had a massive hit on our team,” she shared.
But Neville did credit the work of her skipper in Amy Parmenter, who herself uprooted her life in Sydney to become a face of the Melbourne franchise.
“I have to appreciate that a lot of players took risks because we weren’t able to give them security that we’d signed that player,” she revealed.
“When I was down the line with Amy, she was a very, very good support system.
“I’m not naïve to think that (luring players) was just done by myself.”
The Mavericks would go on to only miss finals in their inaugural season by percentage in a stunning Super Netball debut.
Watch the full interview on Off The Court here.
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