Grace Nweke’s Super Netball move creates challenges for Australia, says Diamonds coach

Diamonds coach Stacey Marinkovich says the player pipeline to her world champion side is being held up by the influx of internationals playing Super Netball in Australia.

Widely considered the world’s best netball competition, the league has attracted many of the game’s elite players with Silver Ferns shooting ace href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/silver-ferns-lose-star-shooter-grace-nweke-as-she-pursues-australian-franchise-netball/DTFHNR2NCJA7HBNW35MI6MOPXE/">Grace Nweke the latest to sign, playing with the NSW Swifts in 2025.

Nweke was key to New Zealand’s Constellation Cup triumph, scoring 169 goals from four games with an average conversion rate of 94%.

The Australians lost the first three matches in the series to hand over the transtasman trophy for just the second time since 2013 but rallied to win the final match in Melbourne in commanding fashion 63-50.

An upside for the Diamonds is that Nweke is unavailable for Silver Ferns selection by playing outside of New Zealand and Australian players will get the chance to play with and against her on a regular basis.

However, Marinkovich said there was a wider problem for the world No 1 team with almost 20% of Super Netball players now internationals, including one-third of the Jamaican national team who played at last year’s World Cup.

Marinkovich said some contenders to wear the Diamonds dress weren’t getting enough experience.

With 16 spots in the goal circle in the eight Super Netball teams, there are 10 international goalers signed for 2025 led by Jamaicans, five-time league MVP Jhaniele Fowler and Romelda Aiken-George, and England pair Helen Housby and Eleanor Cardwell.

Diamond shooter Donnell Wallam will play in New Zealand next year after she was left without a Super Netball home when the Queensland Firebirds instead opted to sign Ugandan star Mary Cholhok.

“Super Netball is the best competition in the world and you want the best players there – it’s an entertainment product,” the coach said.

“But we also need to recognise that we do have a bottleneck of youth and we’ve got to work out if we can’t get them on the Super Netball court, what does that look like?

“And I think that’s the part that, we do need to take it seriously, because there are more international players coming into the competition, and we’ve got players that we want to be (playing).

“In the past, there’s players ready to go once players step out of that Diamonds environment, the next one is there, whereas we’re actually having players that are playing their first and second year in Super Netball, not five years, to then push into that part.

“So, yeah, there’s challenges with it.”

There are no plans for the Australian competition to follow the lead of the England Super League and cap imports but Marinkovich said there were ongoing discussions with Netball Australia.

“Netball Australia’s doing some work in the space of Super Netball and what the Diamonds need, or what challenges their environment because of that construct,” she said.

In the meantime, she said her Test team defenders would make the most of going head-to-head with the world’s top shooters in the Super competition.

“I think every tall shooter in the international comp is in Super Netball,” Marinkovich added.

“What we don’t have in the Diamonds environment at the moment is that big post-up shooter.

“But they’re going to get it week in, week out and in their actual training environments with their own team so they’ll work on that skill set and hopefully we’ll get some great reward from that.”