Finals started over the weekend for the Junee Netball Club, with several teams making it to the finals, and some even going on to play semi-finals.
An astonishing achievement for such a small Club that celebrates even more success in finally claiming the Junee Recreation and Aquatic Centre as its new home.
Robert Vergano of the Club spoke to the Junee Independent about the Club’s success this year and how excited they all are as they push for a Grand Final win.
“We’ve got several players across the club that are looking ahead to trialling with some representative netball teams for the 2026 season as well,” he said.
“I know Wagga netball is running a prep for rep, so we’ve got one of our players and one of our coaches actually helping Wagga netball at the moment with running a prep for rep themselves, so they are training some of the younger athletes that are looking at playing rep netball next year.
Everything is looking really good.
“Even at this late end of the season, we’ve still got new people to the area that are signing up and joining the Netball Club as well. It’s been a really good season, and it’s been really positive.
“Because we are coming towards the end of the season, on Monday, we had a Father’s Day netball training session, it was an all Club training session where dads are invited to come along and take their daughters on in a game of netball, followed by a barbeque, so that will be a good family bonding thing for all our netball families in Junee.
“We been utilising the Junee Rec Centre, so we’ve had a good partnership with them this year as our training facility for all our teams from our net set go, our young ones that train there on a Thursday night through to the rest of our teams, our 12s, 14s, intermediates and our two opens teams train on a Monday night there.
“The netball courts are great. The facilities are good. It’s got a great culture, it’s got staff working throughout the period that we’re training, so, especially for our younger ones, it’s a safe environment as well. It’s a very good facility.
“I know some of the parents might go in and use the gym itself, or the pool while training’s on, so they get to do their own self-care while their daughters are training.
“I think we were sitting pretty well last year with teams making the semis. This year, we’ve got a whole new playing group in the club, and despite having that new playing group and new combinations, some of those teams are still making the semi-finals.
It has been a one-season adjustment for some of the players to get used to one another on the court, but they’ve shown how far we can come and that good relationship on and off the court we have got is paying dividends because we’ve formed enough of a combination on the court to be looking at semi-finals.
“It has been a really good season. It has come to this point of the season quite quickly.
You think back, when it starts in April, it’s going to be a long season, but all of a sudden, before
you know it, we will be one game away from the end of the season and looking at the semi-finals.
“September, October, that’s when a lot of the representative teams are trialling. They will trial, they will get picked, and then probably in December, some of those rep teams will start a little bit of pre-season until the end of January. So there’s not much rest for those who are playing at that higher level.
“We form partnerships with a lot of the businesses in town, and we thank all of our sponsors and our partners in town for what they do because the money they bring in, we utilise for Monday night, for example, for the fundraising, we bring in specialist coaching and we’ll pay for that. That’s how our sponsorship assists the development of our players. It provides them opportunities that we wouldn’t be able to provide if we didn’t have that financial backing.
“Come and join the Club, that is how the community can get involved as well. Come and play netball, we don’t discriminate on age. Our eldest player is in their late 30s, and then down to seven or eight. So we’ve got a big gap in ages there that you can play at any age.
“There’s plenty of opportunity for our girls, we encourage all our girls to trial for rep, but we also do tap someone on the shoulder as some of them don’t feel they’re up to that rep standard, but we like to identify those that we feel are also up to that rep standard and should be trialling and not standing back thinking they are not at thatstandard.
“Nearby we’ve got Wagga Rep and Coolamon Rep, which are opportunities to play that next level that they could be trialling for over the next couple of weeks.”
Cheer on the netballers as they look to win the big one.
Jack Murray
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