Will Whiteacre sometimes imagines he is national team player Brodie Roberts, slicing through the top of the goal circle to receive a feed before turning and shooting a goal with perfect form. It says much about the growing profile and legitimacy of the men’s game in Australia that a 14-year-old from Bendigo has a male netball idol.
Although boys and men have played the predominantly female sport for more than 40 years in Australia, the last decade has seen a spike in participation and mainstream acceptance, culminating in a watershed moment last October, when a series between Australia and New Zealand’s female teams included two televised curtain-raisers between the nations’ men’s sides.
The landmark trans-Tasman series was followed by a game for the Australian men against England in Sydney and a Fast5 series in New Zealand involving the Kiwis and England.
For the first time, the more than 116,000 Australian men and boys like Whiteacre who regularly play the sport saw the men’s game treated as equal to the elite female product. They also saw that there is a pathway to national representation. It was an “if you can see it, you can be it” moment.
It made names such as Brodie Roberts, a sleek shooter who dominated games last October, and national captain Dylan Nexhip, as well-known in netball circles as Liz Watson and Courtney Bruce.
Whiteacre, who was among the first in the stands at Melbourne’s John Cain Arena, says the match mattered a great deal.
“It meant so much to me, and every boy out there playing. It showed that the game we love is here, that there’s a path, a goal to reach in your sport, that you can represent your country, be on telly, all that,” he says.
Even though international netball remains sanctioned for women only by World Netball, an agreement between governing bodies on both sides of the Tasman and in England allowed last year’s games to be played. It is hoped the world status may change.
If it does, the Australian men’s team will be able to wear the coat of arms like their female counterparts, the Diamonds. Representing Australia is something Whiteacre, who plays wing attack and both shooting positions, dreams of.
The teenager will take another step forward when he represents Victoria in the Under-17 division of the week-long men’s and mixed national championships, which begin in Perth on Sunday. The under-17 team Whiteacre has been part of since he was just 12 are aiming to win their third consecutive national title.
“I’m the youngest player in my team, but while I am as tall as most of them now, playing in this age group for a few years means I’ve worked out ways to be smarter and work my way around them,” he says.
“I’m not intimidated and really want to win the title for Victoria, which has a proud tradition in men’s netball.”
After playing his first game of netball at eight when his older sister needed a fill-in, Whiteacre fell in love with “everything about it”.
He gave up field hockey and quickly moved through the ranks, playing with girls at South Bendigo Junior Netball Club and then boys at Bendigo Strathdale Netball Association, before playing Junior MLeague, a boy’s competition in Melbourne, and finally the men’s MLeague.
In a curtain-raiser to a Super Netball preseason game in Bendigo this year, he played in an invitational Victorian under-23 side; “a pretty special experience at home”.
Whiteacre’s school teacher parents Sharee and James spend more than 12 hours a week in the car getting him to club games and state trainings in Melbourne. “It’s what parents do. You help your kids chase their dreams,” his mother says.
Andrew Simons, an anaesthetist from Melbourne who previously captained the Australian men’s team and is now president of the volunteer Australian Men’s Mixed Netball Association, which helps run the national championships, says Whiteacre is part of the “new generation” of netballers who’ve “always played”.
“Men’s netball is in the best place it’s ever been,” he says. “At the top level, we’re starting to get whole teams of guys who’ve had what I’d call a true netball upbringing, who have come through the pathways, not just picked up the game because they were athletic and coordinated. They’ve grown up with netball as their default sport.”
The exposure in 2022 legitimised and promoted the game in a way that once could only have been imagined, Simons adds.
The national championships have been running for 38 years and will this year feature 41 teams across seven divisions, attracting about 1,000 players, coaches, managers, umpires and support staff. And one 14-year-old hoping to catch a glimpse of his hero.
