Tracey Neville’s netball journey to Adelaide has been one of grief, greatness and grasping chances

Neville was preparing to coach England at the Netball World Cup, watched on by her proud parents Jill and Neville. Australia was a place her dad had never been, and the first time she could afford to pay for the Manchester couple to attend a World Cup.

While the former WA/GA had contested two as a player — for bronze in Christchurch in 1999 and fourth in Kingston four years later — as well as two Commonwealth Games during her 81-Test playing career for the Roses, this would be her debut pinnacle event as coach, having been appointed on an interim basis after Anna Mayes was stunningly sacked less than five months earlier.

On the flight from the UK, patriarch Neville Neville suffered an aneurysm, which prompted a mercy dash from sons Phil and Gary, the former England footballers.

Together, the famous clan gathered around Neville’s bedside at St Vincent’s Hospital as his life support machine was switched off. The quartet then headed to Darling Harbour for an incredibly emotional yet also memorable meal.

“I was with Gary, Phil and me mum, and I said, ‘This is the only time that probably us four will ever be together without our children or our grandparents or our partners or anyone else around’,’’ Tracey Neville told CODE Sports, in her distinctive Mancunian accent. “It was a pretty surreal moment.’’

Last month, after the Thunderbirds’ round eight Super Netball defeat of the Giants at Ken Rosewall Arena, Tania Obst’s assistant returned with husband Michael Timmons and three-year-old son Nev, named for the grandfather he never met.

“My family flew in and we went to dinner down there in Darling Harbour and I thought, ‘Oh, there’s some good memories ’ere’.’’

Mother-in-law Greta is in Adelaide for support after mum Jill returned to Bury, where Gary’s two daughters are keen netballers – but promised to return if the T-birds made finals for the first time since 2013.

In Tracey’s first season on the coaching staff, top four is assured. Jill Neville will be back next month.

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Tracey laughs when asked what it’s like to be a Neville in England. “We’re a very intense family!’’ she says, then chuckles again and, louder, still.

Twin brother Phil, 47, is the former manager of US Major League Soccer club Inter Miami CF after a decorated playing career with Manchester United, Everton, and England.

Older brother Gary, 48, a former Man U captain and all-time great with 85 international caps, eight Premier League titles and two in the Champions League, is now a broadcast pundit for Sky Sports.

“I don’t think me mum and dad knew what was gonna happen next!’’ says Tracey of their active brood. “If sport wasn’t part of our day it was a pretty miserable day.

“But our parents always created opportunities for us and they supported us in them opportunities. One thing me dad always said – take your opportunity today because that may never come tomorrow.’’

Australia is a recurring theme in Neville’s story, dating back to 2000, when the England International was recruited by local Adelaide club Contax at the instigation of Obst, who was coaching the reserves. What was an unusual move at the time was also a popular and successful one.

State League premiership? Tick.

Commonwealth Bank Trophy call-up? Utterly unexpected.

“Lo and behold, Jacqui Delaney did her ACL in that year, and that’s when I got pulled into the Adelaide Thunderbirds,’’ Neville recalls. “It was a pretty big shock for someone to be brought over here (at all), and I don’t think I was at the playing level to step up to that (standard of national) competition.

“When you look at the opportunities players have now internationally, how much time they get against these top teams, we hadn’t had that. We were looking to play Australia once a year and generally we got kicked by about 50 goals.’’

Different times nevertheless forged lasting connections, including a close friendship with Obst, whom Neville drafted in as her Roses assistant in 2018-19, when the South Australian was working under Julie Fitzgerald at the Giants.

“We’d kept in contact and she wanted to push herself a little bit like what I’m doing now,’’ says Neville. “We had a really good working relationship. She was defence, I was attack, and I’ve sort of took on her role now; she’s the serious one, the intense one, and I’m the fun coach, I reckon!’’

The pair’s first success came on Australian shores, through England’s monumental upset of the Diamonds in the dramatic gold medal game at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast; the top-placed Thunderbirds, on the brink of securing the double-chance, may soon provide a second.

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Helen Housby’s clutch last-gasp penalty. The greatest day in her nation’s netball history.

“Housby shooting that goal was a game-changer for England netball,’’ says Neville. “That was about the history of every single player, every single coach who had worked their four-year tenure to try and win a gold medal, and the way it changed England netball and the impact that had back home.

“People say winning can affect the sport, and that is so true. The amount of sponsorship that we had come in, and the recognition that we got from other avenues — we won BBC Sports Personality of the Year, the greatest moment — and I think we had something like 1.5 million people watch that Commonwealth Games final.

“When I’d see my mum and nan sat on a court watching me at club netball years ago, and when I’ve sat in a 67,000 stadium watching my brothers play for Man United from a very early age, you think about moments and the impact you want to make on a sport… I did want that moment for netball. And I think we got that moment.’’

But not without more personal devastation for Neville, who suffered a miscarriage the next day.

She would continue on, riding an unprecedented wave of public support and interest through to a home World Cup in Liverpool in 2019, while also recalibrating, internally.

After a career playing and coaching in international stadiums dominated by green and gold or the Silver Ferns’ black and silver, a sold-out event was, instead a sea of red and white. The confident-bordering-on-cocky Roses, who had been tipped as a likely finalist, faltered against New Zealand in the semis to finish with bronze.

Neville had announced in advance her intention to stand down after the Liverpool campaign, regardless of the result, citing the desire to concentrate on her “personal life”, to start a family, but indicating she would like to eventually return.

It was a hard decision. She had done brilliantly well. Felt like she could take England even further. “But I also had the difficult position that I was a 43-year-old lady who wanted children, and I had tried to have children during that particular cycle, but I’d had two miscarriages.

“So then can you believe that I handed my notice in and within two months I found out I was pregnant? And then I had Nev.

“I think the stresses of that job, you talk about these head coaches, and I watch them now and I have every sympathy for the way that they work. They’re under a huge amount of pressure, winning and losing stops with them, and that is exactly where I was when I was in that head coach position.

“You were constantly stressed, you don’t sleep, you never stop workin’, and I see this now with Tania Obst! I have to tell her sometimes just to stop, cos you’re always thinkin’, you’re always workin’, you’re always on task, and that is where I was at with the Roses. I didn’t have time to have a baby, and I knew that I’m a pretty intense person. If you do something well you do it proper, and I knew that the only way I could give myself and Michael the opportunity to have a baby was to hand my notice in.

“But you hand your notice in and I actually thought, ‘Well, is that the end of my career?’’’

Not quite. Neville is here doing something else she always wanted to do: coaching in Super Netball.

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The first official SSN interest came in 2020. The new mum applied for the Firebirds’ job vacated by Roselee Jencke, then withdrew, given the potential difficulty of her husband being able to join her in Covid times, as Australia’s borders clanged shut.

Then, at last year’s Birmingham Commonwealth Games, a casual conversation with Obst planted a “guest coaching” seed with the Thunderbirds, which morphed into her current full-time role alongside defensive guru Cathy Fellows.

“Someone said to me once (that) I’d never be an assistant coach, because my personality, I’m sort of high maintenance, I’m intense,’’ says the engaging Neville, who is often on her feet at courtside, seen laughing with Obst on the bench and dancing on Twitter (LINK @traceynev).

She is enjoying it, though, bringing all her obvious personal qualities plus the experience of being the grand pooh-bah elsewhere, with a transition via a deputy’s role at the Manchester Thunder. “I actually do the best parts of the job. I say to Tania that it’s like you get the best parts of the meal, really, don’t you?’’’

That means leaving soon after training finishes at 2pm to take over the parenting duties. Neville’s brief is to lead the attack end, where the low-scoring T-birds had struggled in recent seasons to convert the ball won by Shamera Stirling, Latanya Wilson and now Tilly Garrett.

The shooting star is Eleanor Cardwell, Neville’s former Manchester Thunder alumnus and protege, who had already committed to her Super Netball debut season when, a few months later, Neville signed on.

Neville had been the catalyst for Cardwell’s move from defence to attack, and the goaler has flourished since.

“I’ve seen Eleanor go through some really tough times, but one thing that I’ve really picked up in her is her resilience and her hunger to be better, and I think her move out here this year was the move she needed to take on her international game and become world class.’’

Neville’s remit includes ball movement, the Thunderbirds’ attack into the circle and what lies within, “but also looking at the critical scenarios and how we work through them … And having the third coach has really supported Tania in the fact that she can divy her time a little bit more into that defence end, rather than just solely concentrating on the attack’’.

Yet the fact that pressure was growing on Obst as she entered her fifth season in her second stint with the Thunderbirds, and that an experienced and successful senior coach was potentially a ready-made replacement within the Adelaide camp, may have seemed from the outside to be a risk for the incumbent.

Neville, who was the public face when Covid forced Obst to coach remotely in round five while the more media-shy Fellows preferred to stay in the shadows, disagrees.

“It’s never a risk because she knows that she’s got complete trust in me, and this is a friendship that’s formed over 24 years. She came in and supported me wholeheartedly on the England program, at a time when it was really needed.

“We were setting up the professional program there and she gave me the insight and the support that I really needed, but she was also honest; she knew that we have this really honest relationship, and I think that is something that I bring to her now.

“I don’t think Tania has any fear on that; as the head coach, you bring in the best people that are needed at that particular time. She knows that she’s one of my best mates, she’s one of my best working colleagues, we have a great relationship working together.’‘

The unknown was how the Neville-Fellows dynamic would work.

“I think that was the worry,’’ the newcomer admits. “But Cathy’s an unbelievable mind, she definitely is the Adelaide Thunderbirds’ secret assassin.

“I was a defensive coach for two years at Manchester Thunder, but looking at the way she works I was a pretty poor one compared with the work that she puts in behind the scenes.’’

As for a return to a head coach position herself, whether at club or international level, never say never, she insists, but not right now. “The assistant coach role has worked really well for me and my family, and actually I’m really enjoying it, being able to have that happy medium.

“I’ve got an addictive personality, and the head coach role really drives that particular addiction.’’

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Neville Neville may have been big on grasping chances when they’re presented, but his daughter’s introduction to the Roses came in circumstances that were both challenging, given the timing of Mayes’ axing, and earlier than imagined, at the age of 37.

“It was never a good thing, removing someone who’d done a huge part of a four-year cycle, and then removing her at the close, so coming into that was very difficult for myself and the players.

“But, like I say, you get one opportunity, and your dream as a coach is always to coach your country, so I took that opportunity on.’’

Neville could not have known, of course, that her father’s health would fail him; nor anticipate the outpouring of sympathy and support as she grappled with the decision to go home to grieve or remain with the team and see the World Cup through.

“And for me there was only one decision, and that was to stay.’’

Neville’s current stint in Australia is ahead of the World Cup in Cape Town, starting on July 27. There, an England team coached by an under-pressure Jess Thirlby, will seek to return to the medal dais its veteran squad toppled off last year in Birmingham.

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Neville, clearly, is enjoying this experience, but also says she needs to make sure any reprise in 2024 will work for her family, as husband Michael works remotely on UK time in the aged care business he runs with his brother.

“I’ve had a great year. I’ve loved being out here. I’ve loved coaching the best netball, but there’s obviously other conversations we’ve got to have before that obviously comes through,’’ she says, just happy to be here, for now.

“Obviously I’ve known Tania a long time and we’ve been speaking over the last few years, and I’ve seen what sort of program she’s building. So it’s just exciting for me to come out here and give it a shot, really.’’