Kadie-Ann Dehaney opens up about tough decision to switch clubs ahead of clash with Vixens

Having arrived as a speculative project player to complete the Vixens’ inaugural SSN list in 2017, the gangly teenager needed to build her strength, sharpen her footwork and learn the finer arts of the defensive craft from master coach and ex-Diamonds great Simone McKinnis.

What made those early years in faraway Melbourne easier was being embraced by the wider Vixens group, in much the same way as her one-time flatmate Mwai Kumwenda, who included three teammates among her bridal party at her recent wedding in Malawi.

Indeed, when Kumwenda ruptured her ACL in 2018 and moved into team manager Lisa Taylor’s home to avoid stairs during her rehabilitation, Dehaney only lasted one night alone before also relocating to the Taylors’ — whose three children include North Melbourne footballer Curtis, and daughter Liv, who graciously vacated her bedroom to cater for the two extra house guests.

A planned stay of a few weeks stretched to three months for both Vixens internationals.

And then, at the end of 2021, following five seasons sitting in the queue behind her friend Emily Mannix while used mostly as an injury replacement or sparingly as an impact player off the bench, the 2020 premiership player had to make the difficult call to shift elsewhere.

To the Sunshine Coast Lightning where, last season, she was in less-familiar yellow for her 50th Super Netball game.

“I had to take emotion out of it. It’s one of the things that you have to look at what’s best for you, even though I think the Vixens are still the right place!’’ Dehaney, now 26, says ahead of Saturday night’s game against her old team.

“It’s like the nest for me. That’s where I learnt all of my skill, everything they taught me, like how to drive, I’ve just grown up with the Vixens, so that was very tough, coming into an environment at the Lightning where I didn’t know anyone.’’

Moving clubs can be a wrench for any player, but, in the case of some of the league’s current cohort of 14 internationals — six Jamaicans, four England Roses, and one each from Malawi, South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago — the long distance from home and the fact they have not come through the development pathways and built relationships there can make it harder still.

Little wonder that Dehaney, who is in career-best form and won her first match MVP award in round one, has only this year felt she has settled into an environment now led by rookie Lightning head coach Belinda Reynolds.

“I feel like it’s definitely a different kind of culture from last year,’’ says the long-limbed 192cm keeper. “It’s more comfortable, easier to express yourself, to express your opinion, whether it’s positive or negative, and we just take it on and move and just play. I feel like it’s easier to play.

“And I feel like coming from the Vixens where I had someone to play for, like Simone, I feel like we have someone in ‘B’ to play for, because we know B put in the hard work for us and we know we have clarity around the game plan.

“So even though I love Simone, Simone is still on top of the table, I feel like we have someone to play for at Lightning now.’’

*****

With veterans Geva Mentor and Jo Harten, plus impressive new Thunderbird Eleanor Cardwell, Helen Housby is among an English cast trimmed down from its peak years following the contentious abolition of the one-per-club import cap, when Eboni Usoro-Brown, Layla Guscoth, Stacey Francis-Bayman and Nat Metcalf were playing in Australia’s world-best league.

Unlike Mentor, who has frocked-up for the Thunderbirds, Vixens, Lightning and now Magpies across her long career, Housby remains with her original club, the Swifts, after being recruited from the Manchester Thunder for the start of SSN in 2017.

“It was definitely difficult,’’ Housby recalls. “I think I was 21 at the time when I first decided to move out to Sydney and I didn’t know any of the players, didn’t know any of the coaches, I just had no idea about the lifestyle in Australia, or anything really.

“It probably didn’t take long to settle in, I think just because we had such a great group of girls, and obviously Sydney’s a very nice place to live. There was definitely homesickness in those first couple of weeks, but I think the fact that a lot of our squad were also not from NSW … you kind of did have to band together a little bit and be each other’s support system, and be each other’s friends and sisters and all of that.’’

Seven years, 83 games and two premierships later, while hosting parents Gillian and Sydney on a day trip to the Blue Mountains as part of their first visit since the pre-Covid days of 2019, Housby tells CODE Sports that she cannot see herself ever playing against the Swifts.

“Especially the girls that we’ve had for so many years, it does feel like we’re family, and I would feel like a bit of a traitor to be honest, if I went and played for another club,’’ she says.

“And on the same note, I love living in this city, and actually can’t imagine playing anywhere else or with any other players or with any other coaching staff, because Sydney and the NSW Swifts feels like my home now.’’

It helped that the goal attack had another overseas import, Trinidadian and fellow shooter Sam Wallace, to live with for the first six years, with Metcalf and Tayla Fraser also part of the share house at various times.

Now cohabiting with her Irish partner Barry O’Connor, a former Sydney Swan playing in the VFL for the GWS Giants this season, Housby differentiates between relocating interstate and internationally; not just for the relative ease of domestic travel compared with long-haul, but the time zone complications of simply staying in touch with those back home.

“Everyone has their challenges,’’ she says. “But I do think living away from home in another country is quite the challenge.’’

In Perth, meanwhile, five-time MVP Jhaniele Fowler has done it even harder than most since switching from New Zealand club Southern Steel.

Only in this, her sixth year in SSN, is the 33-year-old shooter able to have her daughter Drehannah, now 13, as well as fiance Ashani Nembhard, with her for the duration.

Slightly scary to think how well Fowler played without this new level of happiness off the court. She did miss a goal in round three though.

Just the one.

*****

Even when it was still a few weeks away, Dehaney could nominate instantly when the Lightning were due to play the Vixens.

Round four. At home, at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

Before switching clubs, she messaged former Vixen Ine-Mari Venter for a character assessment of fellow South African Karla Pretorius, her now-partner in the defensive circle after returning from maternity leave.

Still in regular touch with Mannix, Liz Watson, Kate Moloney and occasionally Jo Weston, Dehaney completed her due diligence by asking about captain Steph Wood and others with whom the senior Vixens are all familiar from their time together on Diamonds duty.

The reassuring verdict: “Emily said ‘Trust me that’s the one club where they’re very nice people there and they’re very passionate, very wholesome, very good girls’.’’

The respect is mutual, apparently, as Dehaney prepares for an individual duel with Kumwenda, during an on and off-court reunion with an unchanged team she knows so well.

“People always ask me who my favourite (side) to play against and it’s funny,’’ Dehaney says. “You ask the Lightning girls who do they like playing against and it’s the Vixens. I’m like, ‘Ooh, really!’.

“But they say they’re a quality team and they just always bring it and you know they’re always on your heels. When you’re up by 10, like, you can’t relax with the Vixens.

“But, for me, I like playing them because I just like seeing them.’’

Housby admits she has “a lot of sympathy” for what will no doubt be some mixed, but heightened, emotions for the likeable Jamaican this weekend, and hopes never to be in that situation.

“Honestly I couldn’t imagine pulling on a different coloured dress and then running out in Sydney against the Swifts. I couldn’t stand it, to be honest,’’ Housby says.

“Just seeing the other girls and not being in the same team huddle as them, and seeing them celebrate or do whatever, I think I’d find it really hard not to be a part of that.

“Obviously you form new relationships and new bonds with your team, which I know Kadie-Ann has done, but I think you’d always have a bit of a soft spot for the place where it all started for you.’’