Lane Cove Netball Club Wants More Boys on the Court, From the Start

In the Cove publisher Renee Maxwell writes about her son’s path into netball and a local club quietly leading the way on boys in the game.

At Galuwa Recreation Centre in May 2026, two NSW Swifts players were taking questions after a training session. There was a prize for the best one. A hand went up near the back of the room. It belonged to a boy. The only boy there. His question was not about shooting or defence. He wanted to know if they had any advice on how to get more boys like him into netball.

The room drew a breath. Lane Cove Netball Club president Di Payne gave a little jump and threw her hands in the air. A delighted yes. Because this right here is the thing she has been wanting.

That boy is my son. He won the prize for the best question of the night: a bag of Swifts kit.

He was never meant to be the sporty one. We tried a lot of sports. Season after season. Every well-meaning “he’ll find his thing.” I made quiet peace with the idea that he was brains not brawn. Then netball happened.

It started at school in a competition where kids play other schools and something clicked. This was the boy who had shrugged off every sport I put in front of him. And here he was actually loving it. When a flyer came home for the 2026 NSW All Schools Boys Netball 15 Years and Under Selection Trial, I did what I do. I put it on the fridge and missed the deadline.

So I did the only thing left. I went to Lane Cove Netball Club well after registrations had closed and asked whether there was any way he could just be involved. Volunteering. Hanging around training. Anything. To my surprise the answer was not “sorry, try next year.” It was in essence: we want him in the club.

What has happened since is the reason I am writing this. He was never short on confidence. Netball has given it somewhere to grow. He belongs to this club now and he knows it. On the nights he plays he is usually the only boy on the courts, and he could not care less. At games over at Willoughby he gets the double takes. The little boys whose sisters are playing stop and say “there’s a boy playing.” One of them was maybe four and said it to him directly. “Yeah,” Cooper told him. “Boys can play netball too.”

A club that said yes before it had a reason to

He is not quite the only one. There is one other boy at the club. He is a few years older, has played for several seasons and has just finished his last one with the club. And if Lane Cove Netball Club has its way, there will be a lot more joining next year.

The numbers tell you how far there is to go and how much the club is doing on its own initiative. It has 264 playing members this season. Two of them are boys. A few more have registered for the summer competition at Galuwa, which runs until December. Nobody made this club open its doors to boys. It chose to.

Lane Cove Netball Club is an open community club rather than a single-school club, and it welcomes boys from NetSetGo age. President Di Payne and vice president Karmen Karamanian are clear that it is a deliberate joint effort. The club encourages boys to play for three reasons, Payne says: to promote inclusivity and equal opportunity in community sport, to retain players who have developed a genuine passion for the game and to align with Netball NSW initiatives encouraging participation regardless of gender.

Her hope for the next few years is simple. “We’d love to see a clear pathway so boys who start with us can keep playing as they get older.”

Why the club starts them young

Here is the thing the club understands. A boy who comes in at six or seven or eight learns netball as netball. He grows up in the game alongside everyone else. He learns the rules and the footwork and the discipline. By 12 he is simply a netballer and not a boy who turned up. Start them young and the numbers follow. With the numbers comes everything else.

Payne puts it plainly. “Boys who start netball young develop the skills and discipline to play cleanly and within the rules. We shouldn’t assume that boys are too strong, physically, to play safely against girls. With the right skills, coaching and understanding of the game, mixed gender netball can be played fairly, safely and competitively.”

Men who missed out say the same thing. Brent Ferguson is vice president of Men’s Netball NSW. He grew up in Newcastle with a mother and two sisters who played every Saturday. “I was sitting in the corner every Saturday,” he says. There was no way for him to play as a boy and he didn’t know it was even an option. He has spent 20 years building the pathway he never had.

In step with where the sport is going

The club is not out on a limb here. It is doing from the ground up exactly what the sport’s leadership has been asking for. Netball NSW’s own guidance to associations urges them to be proactive about boys’ participation and to build numbers over time rather than wait for them. Its executive general manager of strategy, Tim Fava, said last spring that mixed competitions have been a fantastic entry point for males and are where the state has seen its strongest growth in boys and men.

Netball Australia’s 2026 National Junior Netball Guidelines say netball providers should aim to create opportunities for boys over 12 through mixed or boys-only competitions so they keep playing. Stacey West, Netball Australia’s chief executive until April this year, said when she took the role that the sport needed to be inclusive of “our men and our boys.” The sport wants boys. A small volunteer-run club in Lane Cove is simply getting on with it.

Netball is not a girls’ sport. Go and watch.

For anyone who still files netball under girls’ sport, I have two suggestions. Go and watch the NSW Swifts play. It is fast and physical and takes real skill. Then on a Wednesday night go to Netball Central at Sydney Olympic Park. Netball NSW’s Men’s Metro League plays there at 7pm and 8.30pm for about nine dollars at the door. Wednesday is men’s night and the standard is startling.

Australia’s men’s team is called the Kelpies and it is ranked number one in the world. Super Netball clubs are bringing men into their training environments too. The Adelaide Thunderbirds have officially named male training partners for 2026, and the NSW men’s side has trained with the Swifts and Giants in pre-season. This is not a fringe.

Got a boy who might like to give it a go?

On Sunday at the club’s end-of-season presentation, Cooper got up on stage. He is 11. He told the room he loves playing netball. He said this was his first year and that next year could sadly be his last, because once he goes into Year 7 there are no local options to keep playing.

He has one more season. If you have a son who might be interested, put his name down for the next one. The earlier boys start, the sooner Lane Cove has enough of them to keep every one on the court.

NEXT STORY TO COME: why a boy who loves netball runs out of local options at 13, and what it would take to change that.

Disclosure: this article is written by In the Cove publisher Renee Maxwell about her own son, who plays with Lane Cove Netball Club.