Netball’s First Nations Reset: The Rise of the Black Swans
For decades, netball has been the game that fills Australian courts every weekend, the heartbeat of girls’ and women’s team sport. Yet at the elite level, one truth has been impossible to ignore: First Nations players have been almost invisible.
Just three Indigenous women have ever pulled on the Diamonds dress — Marcia Ella-Duncan, Sharon Finnan-White and, after a 22-year gap, Donnell Wallam. Three names across generations of dominance. Three, in a sport played by hundreds of thousands.
That number became even harder to defend when Wallam, one of the most recognisable faces in the modern game, walked away from Australia in 2024.
She didn’t leave quietly.
Wallam headed to New Zealand and used the move to call out her former club, the Queensland Firebirds, citing the New Zealand clubs’ “respect for inclusion and culture” as a key reason for crossing the Tasman. The message landed with force. At the same time, accusations of a “toxic culture” at the Firebirds surfaced, dragging netball’s treatment of Indigenous athletes into the spotlight.
Netball Australia could not look away.
An investigation was launched, and with it came a hard reset: a push to build genuine cultural safety for First Nations athletes, not just slogans on uniforms.
Out of that reckoning, a new symbol emerged — the Black Swans, Australia’s inaugural First Nations team.
A New Pathway: The Black Swans and a Changing Landscape
The Black Swans are more than a marketing line. They are the product of a deliberate shift, driven in large part by Ali Tucker-Munro, Netball Australia’s General Manager First Nations and a former Diamonds squad member.
Under her watch, the code has started to put structure around its promises. The Black Swans now sit alongside two major initiatives: the annual First Nations Tournament, currently being staged in Melbourne, and the Spirit Series, launched in 2026, where the Swans went undefeated against Pacific opposition.
At the State Netball and Hockey Centre, Tucker-Munro stands with two of the players who represent both the struggle and the hope of this new era: defender Gabby Coffey and rising talent Scarlet Jauncey. Their presence underlines what has been missing for so long — visible, aspirational First Nations role models in an elite environment that has rarely felt built for them.
The work, Tucker-Munro admits, is only just beginning. But for players who have hovered on the edge of the top level, the shift is already tangible.
On the Cusp, Then Overseas: Coffey’s Detour
Gabby Coffey knows what it feels like to be close enough to touch Super Netball, yet never quite break through.
Now 26 and representing the Northern Territory, she spent four years as a Melbourne Vixens training partner, waiting for the door to open in the defensive circle. It never did.
“I knew there wasn’t much movement in their defensive end, and the same with a lot of defensive ends around Australia,” she told ABC Sport.
So she left.
Coffey packed up and moved to the UK, signing with Birmingham and playing two seasons there before returning home to Alice Springs. The decision said as much about Australia’s pathways as it did about her ambition. When the local system stalled, she went searching for opportunity elsewhere.
She has not abandoned the dream of a professional contract back home. But she has also made peace with another possibility — that her greatest impact may come through helping other First Nations athletes chase their own sporting goals.
Her story is layered with geography and identity. A Wiradjuri woman who grew up in Alice Springs, away from her own mob and country, she remembers being wrapped in the arms of the Arrernte community.
“When you grow up on other Indigenous land and tell people you’re Indigenous, they pull you into their culture,” she said. “So [my family and I] were super lucky and blessed to grow up in the centre of Australia where arguably their Indigenous culture is very sacred and traditional.”
That sense of belonging made the next step even tougher.
Pursuing netball seriously meant leaving the red centre. On the advice of coach Gillian Lee, Coffey moved south to Melbourne. The shift from Alice Springs to a major city, from tight-knit community to high-performance environment, hit hard.
“It was really hard being away from home,” she said. “I was really lucky with the team I entered [the Vixens] and the support I did have, but it’s not the same for everyone. There’s a lot of girls who do get those opportunities to move and then don’t last because there’s just not that support in place.”
Being from the Northern Territory added another layer of difficulty. The distances are vast. The resources thin.
“Even with competitions like these, we don’t get together until we’re here, and we’re training away from each other, so it can be quite a challenge.”
The talent is there. The pathways, historically, have not been.
‘If You Can’t See It, You Can’t Be It’
When Coffey is asked what needs to change, her answer is blunt.
“If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.”
Right now, there are only two Indigenous players in Super Netball. Two, in the premier competition of the sport that dominates community courts across the country.
Coffey’s own experience — years as a train-on player, never fully inside the elite circle — shows how narrow the funnel can be. The league’s quality is world-class, and the influx of international stars has lifted the standard and the spectacle. She doesn’t want that to stop.
“We get a number of internationals [coming to Super Netball], which I think makes the game better and more exciting, and I don’t think [that] should be restricted,” she said.
The issue, in her eyes, is not about closing the door to overseas talent. It’s about widening it for First Nations players.
“I do think there should be more focus on bringing Indigenous girls into the elite level.”
Netball Australia’s plan to introduce two new teams into the competition could be a turning point. More teams mean more contracts, more list spots, more chances for players like Coffey who have spent years on the brink.
A potential New Zealand team, she added, could also ease the squeeze on Australian players battling for limited spots, creating a broader ecosystem rather than a bottleneck.
Jauncey’s Rise and the Power of Seeing Wallam
On the other side of the country, Scarlet Jauncey is living that “on the brink” reality in real time.
The Yaruwu defender from Rubibi/Broome has spent the last year as a training partner with the West Coast Fever, squaring up in practice against one of the sport’s most dominant figures, Jhaniele Fowler-Nembhard. For a young player, it’s a surreal apprenticeship.
Like Coffey, Jauncey doesn’t want to see the back of international stars.
“We’re happy to be playing against the best in the world, that’s what we want,” she said.
What she craved growing up was something else — someone who looked like her, playing at the top.
She found that in Donnell Wallam.
Like many of her Black Swans teammates, Jauncey idolised Wallam. Watching Wallam crash through barriers and into the Diamonds squad didn’t just entertain her. It lit a path.
“I think it just gives us something to strive towards, knowing that we can be in that space,” she said.
By 2025, Jauncey had flipped the script. She captained the Black Swans, stepping into the role she once sought in others — a First Nations leader, visible and vocal on court.
“It was the best tournament I’ve played in, the best teams I’ve been with,” she said.
What struck her most was not just the standard of netball, but the connection. Shared culture. Shared experience. A space where she didn’t have to explain herself before she could play.
“I think just being able to come to First Nations tournaments and having that connection with each other has been really great.”
Coffey felt the same pull. She described the experience of playing in First Nations tournaments as “goosebumps” territory.
“I think it gives not only myself, but a lot of players so much power and push to keep going and play at the highest level,” she said.
This is what Tucker-Munro hoped for when the Black Swans and the First Nations Tournament were conceived — not tokenism, but a living, breathing pathway that makes young players believe they belong in the big leagues.
Building Cultural Safety, Not Just Pathways
As she listens to Coffey and Jauncey talk, Tucker-Munro smiles. These are the stories she wanted to hear when she took on the role.
The Black Swans. The First Nations Tournament. The Spirit Series. They are her signature projects, but they are also pieces of a bigger plan.
“These tournaments are aspirational in terms of trying to inspire the next generation of our kids — who we know love sport and netball in particular — to trial for their respective state and territory,” she said.
“It’s about the kids that are here this week wanting to aspire to take that next step into the big leagues in terms of Super Netball and Australian representation as well.”
But she is clear on one thing: getting First Nations athletes into elite environments is only half the job. Keeping them there, and ensuring they thrive, demands something deeper.
Cultural safety is not a buzzword for her. It is a condition of success.
“First Nations people come into these spaces with our culture and community on our back, as well as cheering us on, so you want to do them proud,” she said.
“It’s also a tough journey, especially for the kids who have to relocate, so it’s about thinking strategically about how we can support them.”
Since her appointment, Netball Australia has set up a First Nations Cultural Council and completed a cultural safety review, working with community to examine the sport’s environment from the ground up. That review didn’t just look at players; it considered coaches, umpires, and the broader workforce, recognising that culture is shaped by everyone in the system.
The barriers remain “multi-faceted” — financial strain, distance, lack of access to high-level competition — and they are not solved by a single policy or program.
“For too long our voice has been very silent,” Tucker-Munro said.
“We’re not a homogenous people, so it’s really important that we make sure we’re hearing the voices of many.
“One thing we’re really big on in our community is not to do things for us or to us, you’ve got to do it with us.
“There’s real intent and good will to actually drive some of this change across the sporting landscape of netball in Australia.”
The question now is whether that intent can outlast the headlines and the crises that sparked it.
Because somewhere this week, a young First Nations girl is watching the Black Swans, seeing Coffey and Jauncey on court, and quietly deciding she wants that dress next.
