At the launch of the 2019 Super Netball season, NSW Swifts captain Maddy Proud wasn’t in particularly high demand.
When presented with the chance to speak to any of the league’s eight captains, most media gravitated to Collingwood recruit Geva Mentor, Silver Fern and Sunshine Coast superstar Laura Langman, Diamonds and Fever keeper Courtney Bruce or gutsy Melbourne Vixens leader, Kate Moloney. All the talk was about a Lightning three-peat or black and white domination.
As people milled around the cavernous function space in North Melbourne back in mid-April, 25-year-old Proud, one of the youngest captains in the league, at times stood alone.
That’s because after missing finals in the first two seasons of Super Netball – and retaining an almost-unchanged roster heading into the third – the Swifts were meant to be the also-rans of 2019; the tough battlers that weren’t up to it, again. A side synonymous with inconsistency, the same was foreseen this season.
In Super Netball’s first year in 2017, the Swifts won only three games, finishing sixth out of eight. Then last season, with former Swift Briony Akle replacing Rob Wright as coach, they won five of their first seven games and looked set to play finals, before spectacularly falling in a hole and winning just one more for the year. They eventually finished sixth again.
Akle though, stuck with her group – namely the young Australian defensive pairing of Sarah Klau and Maddy Turner, a shooting combination of English Rose Helen Housby and Trinidadian Sam Wallace, along with Proud and Paige Hadley in the midcourt – the latter who had been dropped from the national side. English attacker Natalie Haythornthwaite, shooter Sophie Garbin and defenders Kate Eddy and Lauren Moore made up the numbers, rounding them out as a solid, but unspectacular line up.
Despite most of the group having multiple years together, the raw and established talent in the team and the Instagram-worthy close personal bonds, few expected much.
Wallace wasn’t ever put in the same sentence as Jhaniele Fowler or Romelda Aiken, the defensive pair wasn’t considered fearsome enough and the midcourt didn’t match what Collingwood had with Madi and Kelsey Browne, Kim Ravaillion and Ash Brazill. Oh, and they didn’t have a single current Diamond.
In virtually every pre-season discussion this year, pundits had the foundation NSW team towards the bottom of the ladder – and rarely anywhere near the top. In a player survey for News Limited, no side, except the Swifts themselves, had them inside the four.
Proud knew as much, saying at the launch that her side expected to be written off. “People definitely do (underestimate us),” she said. “I think that’s because of what’s happened in the last few years; we have had that inconsistency. We’ll be able to show glimpses of brilliance and we’ll be so good for one game and then we’ll kind of not come to play, pretty much, the next week. For us, that’s what we’ve gone away and tried to work on; really focusing on that consistency, to be able to bring 100 percent effort every single week.”
Proud said the group, while still one of the youngest and most inexperienced in the competition, would make no excuses in 2019. And, as it’s turned out, they don’t need to.
Although Proud succumbed to an ACL injury last week, ending her season, after eight rounds and seven wins – including an incredible four-goal come-from-behind win over the Giants late yesterday – the Swifts sit comfortably atop the Super Netball ladder.
They’re 10 points clear of back-to-back premiers the Sunshine Coast Lightning, the only side to beat them so far this year, on 53 points. The Vixens, who accounted for a depleted Queensland Firebirds by 11, are third. The Swifts’ buffer is helped by a whopping 25 bonus points, awarded for winning a quarter. That means they’ve “lost” just seven quarters from 32 since late April.
And they’ve done it by playing as a team; with and for each other. While 193cm Wallace is the second-most prolific shooter in the league, sitting on 360 goals at 94% accuracy, behind Fever’s Fowler on 415 and 95% accuracy, the Swifts don’t dominate any key statistical metrics; only matches.
Klau ranks fourth for the most deflections so far this season, with 38, well behind Shamera Sterling’s 71. And she has 20 less intercepts than leader, Lightning’s Karla Pretorius, who put in a stunning performance in her side’s 23-goal demolition of Collingwood on Saturday.
Twenty-four year-old Klau ranks fifth for most defensive rebounds, eight behind Collingwood captain Mentor, and neither shooter makes the cut for most offensive rebounds – mainly because they don’t miss much, shooting at a combined 91% accuracy.
In the midcourt, Hadley sits fifth for most goal assists, behind her injured team mate Proud, who is third, but still 65 behind Vixens and Diamonds wing attack Liz Watson, on 224.
Housby, who is averaging 18 goals a game, is fourth for most centre pass receives, on 178; a clear demonstration of the work she does outside the circle. If there was a metric for creativity, work rate and pure grunt, she’d be leading it.
The most valuable player awards tell a similar story. In the Swifts’ seven wins, four different players have taken out the post-match award.
Like cogs in a machine, it’s the cumulative efforts of the Swifts which have seen them become the highest scoring team, on 516 goals, and the measliest defence, allowing just 427 goals – or about 13 a quarter. They’re on track to surpass the Fever’s 2018 season tally of 912 goals, but unlike Fever, it’s not down to one shooter or one superstar defender. The West Australians currently sit sixth on the ladder after a one-goal win over Adelaide on Saturday.
The fact Klau and Hadley were named in the Australian Diamonds squad for July’s World Cup tells the story of the rise and rise of the Swifts. But now the question arises, can they maintain it or do old habits die hard?
In the last round before the World Cup-enforced break next weekend, the Swifts should easily account for the lowly-placed Thunderbirds. After the five-week break for the tournament, they have the toughest road trip in netball, to Perth to play West Coast Fever.
If they can re-capture their current form and go all the way in September, maybe a few more people will want time with Maddy Proud.
