Twelve New Zealand netballers have now signed contracts to play overseas next year, and the country’s elite domestic competition still has no confirmed season for any of them to come home to.
Three of those moves landed on Tuesday alone. Silver Ferns defender Carys Stythe signed a one year deal with the Melbourne Vixens, her Southern Steel team-mate Kimiora Poi signed with the Queensland Firebirds, and Newstalk ZB reported that shooter Amelia Walmsley is leaving the Northern Stars after a single season, taking its running tally of New Zealanders locked into overseas deals to 13.
Stythe is the sixth current Silver Fern to commit to Australia’s Suncorp Super Netball competition for 2027. She was one of the form defenders in this year’s ANZ Premiership and helped the Steel reach the grand final, but the Steel, like every other New Zealand franchise, cannot offer a player a contract for next season because nobody has confirmed there will be a next season.
“The Vixens are a very prestigious club and I’ve admired how clinically they play each year. I’m privileged to be part of this club and excited to meet all the girls, learn heaps and get started,” Stythe told RNZ. “I’m really looking forward to the challenge of playing Super Netball and ready to take it on. Bring on 2027!”
Poi, who has played nine seasons of ANZ Premiership netball and captained both the Mainland Tactix and the Steel, joins a Firebirds side coached by New Zealander Kiri Wills, where she will line up alongside Silver Fern Kelly Jackson and former Fern Te Paea Selby-Rickit. Wills called the 28 year old a “game-changer” through the middle of the court who “brings unbelievable speed, fitness and creativity in attack, and at the same time she’s relentless defensively”.
The scale of the departure is easier to grasp as a list than as a number. Bound for Australia are Stythe at the Vixens, former Silver Ferns captain Ameliaranne Ekenasio and Maddy Gordon at the West Coast Fever, Georgia Heffernan and Silver Ferns skipper Karin Burger at the Sunshine Coast Lightning, and Poi, Jackson and Selby-Rickit at the Firebirds. Four more have taken deals in the United Kingdom’s Netball Super League, with Charlotte Manley going to the Leeds Rhinos, Holly Mather and Saviour Tui to the LexisNexis Dragons in Wales, and Tiana Metuarau returning for a second season at the Birmingham Panthers. Heffernan and Gordon have both signed two year contracts, which takes them out of New Zealand until the end of 2028.
The Australian contracting window closes on Friday, and RNZ reports at least three more New Zealanders are expected to be announced before it shuts. Star shooter Grace Nweke is understood to be leaving the NSW Swifts, with Australian reports linking her to cross-town rivals the Sydney Sirens. Mila Reuelu-Buchanan is understood to have signed with the Vixens, and Kate Heffernan, twin sister of Georgia, is expected back at the Adelaide Thunderbirds. As many as 16 New Zealanders could be playing offshore next year.
The trigger for all of this is the absence of a broadcast deal for 2027. Without one, Netball New Zealand has been unable to guarantee there will be a professional domestic league at all, and in July it scrapped the last of the eligibility rules that required players to seek a dispensation before signing overseas if they wanted to stay available for the Silver Ferns. That removed the final reason to wait.
New Netball NZ chief executive Jennah Wootten, who started in the role in August, told RNZ the organisation understood the decisions players were making. “We completely understand and respect why players are needing to make decisions in regards to opportunities abroad,” she said. “This is players’ livelihoods and they’ve got to make decisions that are right for them and their families.”
Wootten said several options for the league were being worked through at once, but would not say what they were or even how many there were, citing confidentiality provisions. She said there was no set deadline for a decision. “I don’t have a specific date, but it weighs really heavily on me how critical the timeline is. This is impacting players’ lives, and we need to give them certainty.”
New Zealand Netball Players’ Association general manager Pippa Moore was blunter. She said players were beyond frustrated and that “the reality is a decision needed to be made months and months ago, all the while the players are in a state of limbo, they’re understandably anxious and concerned”. Moore said private investment was the only viable option the players could see. “An amateur league is not acceptable and it is extremely concerning that Netball New Zealand are refusing to rule out returning to an amateur league when there are proposals before them that would keep players in a job.”
The money explains a lot. The ANZ Premiership ran at a deficit of $3.7 million for the 2026 season. Auckland FC part-owners Anna Mowbray and Ali Williams have been in talks to take over the licence for a privately owned franchise league, originally pitched for 2028, and are understood to have since offered a scaled-back version for 2027. A source familiar with the discussions told RNZ it “won’t be the fully-realised product that is envisaged for 2028, I guess it would be more like a beta phase”.
What makes the timing so strange is how recently this same group of players was on a podium. On 2 August the Silver Ferns beat Jamaica 56 to 48 at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow to win Commonwealth Games gold, their first since 2010. Nweke shot 48 from 54 in the final. Poi played the second half at wing attack feeding her. Georgia Heffernan added eight from nine at goal attack. Burger captained the side. Within three weeks of that win, all four had either signed with an Australian club or were being reported as about to.
The franchises themselves have been left thanking players on the way out. The Southern Steel, who have lost Stythe, Poi and Georgia Heffernan, said in a social media post that “it was always going to be hard to fend off other franchises and there’s no doubt our players are in hot demand”, describing the departures as inevitable while “netball recruiting globally is in full swing”.
None of this stops the Silver Ferns from taking the court. Players based overseas remain eligible, and five of the Glasgow gold medallists were already playing in Australia this year. The harder question is what happens underneath them. The ANZ Premiership is where Manley, aged 22, and Stythe, aged 23, were built, and it is the only full-time professional netball on offer to a New Zealand player who does not want to move countries at 20. Right now nobody can tell the next group what they are training towards.
What do you think should happen to the ANZ Premiership? Should Netball New Zealand hand the league to private owners, or is there another way to keep the competition alive? Leave a comment below and let us know.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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