History has repeated itself for the Adelaide Thunderbirds, with the club winning its sixth premiership and second back-to-back national title.
On Saturday, Adelaide defeated the Melbourne Vixens by two goals in front of a 9,500-strong home crowd at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.
The win capped off a dominant season from the Thunderbirds, who only lost three games.
A near-perfect back half to the year included eight straight wins at an average margin of 14 goals.
Much of the success can be credited to coach Tania Obst, as well as world-class defenders Shamera Stirling-Humphrey and Latanya Wilson, who was named the club’s MVP.
But long-time fans will know that winning is ingrained in the Thunderbirds’ very nature.
A team set up to succeed
The Thunderbirds felt pressure to perform from their very first seasons — but it was that pressure that helped establish a culture of success.
Born out of the local Contax Netball Club, the Thunderbirds were a foundation club in the first-ever National Netball League and played in the first six grand finals.
Inaugural coach Margaret Angove and captain Kathryn Harby-Williams were the ones who first applied the winning Thunderbirds pressure.
“We had success immediately, so the Thunderbirds brand was built quite significantly early on, in terms of it being a brand that we expected nothing but success,” Harby-Williams said.
In 1998, the club joined the Adelaide Crows, Lightning and 36ers as a title-winning sporting club, and the result was backed up with a grand final victory over cross-town rivals Adelaide Ravens the following year.
While the club went without further premierships in the National League era, it never finished lower than third until 2011.
“The expectation when we played was to win,” Harby-Williams said.
“If you didn’t win the grand final or make the grand final, that was an unsuccessful season.”
That expectation was upheld for more than a decade, with mid-courter Emily Beaton helping set the standard in the Trans-Tasman era in the early 2000s.
“There was this history with the Thunderbirds and this legacy, and you really felt that coming in as a player. There was an expected standard,” Beaton said.
Beaton was a member of both the 2010 and 2013 premiership teams, which saw another Diamonds captain in Natalie von Bertouch leading the Thunderbirds to success yet again.
But the retirement of von Bertouch marked a sharp decline in form for Adelaide, which was forced to contend with all-time lows.
‘Tumultuous’ and ‘toughest’ times
For more than half a dozen consecutive seasons after the 2013 title, the club did not finish higher than seventh.
The lack of success left a sour note in Beaton’s mouth when she left the sport in 2016.
“[That season] was very tumultuous. We had different coaches come in, the coach changed halfway through as well,” she said.
“It was actually the toughest season of my life.”
Harby-Williams said the club “lost our way a little bit”.
“[As] an outsider, you get really frustrated about not being successful, because when we set up the club we wanted it to have sustained success,” she said.
It was not just Thunderbirds veterans who took the failure hard, with current captain Hannah Petty playing through some of Adelaide’s worst seasons.
“There were some pretty tough times where I probably didn’t love netball during those stages either, in the fact that I wasn’t getting what I wanted out of it,” Petty said.
“We were losing every game. I remember celebrating when we lost under 10 goals.”
The club came to an all-time low in 2018 when it played its first winless season, notching 27 straight losses.
Three-peat? ‘Why not’
After the 2018 season, Tania Obst was re-appointed as the Thunderbirds’ head coach.
“I knew that we could make the state proud again, but it was always going to take a little time to do that,” Obst said.
Hailing from a family well-acquainted with sporting greatness — her father Trevor was a Port Adelaide football club legend — Obst restructured the team around state-based players, eventually achieving another premiership in 2023.
“You might have a great team but the wrong game plan or not the right culture,” she said.
“I really felt like we needed all those pieces to come together, and that’s probably why it did take as long as it did.”
Now holding back-to-back titles, South Australia is investing in netball at multiple levels.
The state government is set to spend $80 million on a new state netball centre to replace the Netball SA Stadium at Mile End.
“It puts a smile on my face thinking about what’s going to happen to this stadium, and how much better it’s going to be for everyone involved,” Petty said.
“It’s also going to propel this sport forward in South Australia,” Obst said.
Attendance has also been strong both in Adelaide and across the country, with Adelaide Entertainment Centre selling out the grand final and the league gaining a record attendance of more than 366,000 this season.
As for the Thunderbirds, they hope to inspire the next generation to take up the game and are now aiming for what would be netball’s first-ever “three-peat”.
“Somebody has to win the competition, and we’re going to be one of eight teams having a go at that,” Obst said.
Captain Hannah Petty said the club had every chance of achieving the feat.
“Hopefully, the core group of girls can stick around for the next few years and we can try and do that,” Petty said.
“Why not?”
