Aussie netball legend Liz Ellis has savaged Netball Australia after she wasn’t invited to an event that’s named after her, but said her initial embarrassment over the mishap “quickly turned to anger”.
Ellis broke her silence after it emerged that she was not initially invited to the Liz Ellis Diamond netball awards in Melbourne on Saturday.
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In a lengthy Instagram post, Ellis explained that she received her invite on November 3, three weeks before the event, but on the same day that RSVPs were due.
Ellis said, despite accepting an apology from Netball Australia chief executive Kelly Ryan, she was already committed to another event on the same evening and could not change her plans. Fellow former captain Annie Sargeant was left to present the Liz Ellis Diamond to star defender Courtney Bruce.
But Ellis said her embarrassment at being unable to attend the event named in her honour quickly became anger after she heard that players had been issued legal threats to attend.
Diamonds contracted players were threatened with potential legal action on the day of the awards, saying they must attend the ceremony rather than stay home in solidarity with Suncorp netball players, who refused to go in protest amid an ongoing pay dispute that’s left them without income for months.
Ellis said the way the players had been treated revealed a damning truth about the direction of the sport.
“My disappointment and embarrassment at not being able to attend turned into anger when I was made aware that current Diamonds players and their advisers were threatened with possible legal action if they did not attend the dinner,” Ellis wrote.
“As a former Diamonds captain, I cannot believe that the governing body of the sport I love would treat its Diamonds athletes, who are brilliant role models and ambassadors for netball with such callous disregard.
“These are women who have not been paid in eight weeks. Who are fighting for fair pay and conditions not only for themselves but for the players who come after them.
“Who consider themselves as custodians of the game. And who I suspect would love nothing more than to attend an event where their world-beating heroics of the past twelve months were to be celebrated. Yet who felt so strongly about what they were fighting for, that they were prepared to forgo those celebrations.”
Ellis said, “yet again”, netball had found itself in the headlines “for the wrong reasons — another crisis entirely of the sport’s own making”.
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“This has happened so often in recent times the question must be asked whether Netball Australia is capable of providing the leadership the sport so desperately needs,” she wrote.
“This question must be asked not just by players, or ex-players like me, but by the whole system.
“And it is a question which needs an immediate answer.”
