When the registration fees are due each year for the Stella’s, a social team that contests the Monday night competition at the Queensland State Netball Centre, Donna Beard is always the first to pay.
Keen? Yes, you could say that.
The long-time netball fanatic is also the only ‘Stella’ capable of doing the splits. That irks her teammates - which she also might enjoy. Just a little bit.
We should point out that Donna Beard, a grandmother of five, is 60. She is almost 26 years older than her next youngest teammate: Emma Porter, her daughter, fellow Queensland Firebirds season-ticket-holder and dual Netball World Cup attendee.
“I’m 61 next month and I’m still a netball tragic,’’ says Donna with a laugh.
It all started half-a-century ago, at a Catholic primary school in suburban Brisbane. Netball - or women’s basketball, as she thinks it was still known - was what the girls played, so dutiful Donna joined in when she was nine or 10.
She loved it (of course she did), and continued playing until a post-marriage break while raising her two children, when life, as she puts it, “got in the way” of a different love.
“Then about 30 years ago, someone at the place where I was working said ‘we’re thinking of starting up an indoor netball team on Wednesday nights’. And I was like ‘yeah, I haven’t played netball for years, let’s give it a go’.
”So I started playing again, and I think I’ve played every week since.’’
Donna is a goal keeper, mostly. During her chats with Emma in their regular debriefs as they drive their separate ways home each Monday night, she sometimes struggles to understand life at the other end of the court.
“Mum's such a defender that she’ll be like ‘I can’t believe they can miss the close ones’,’’ Emma says. “I say ‘Of course you can’t, you’ve never shot in your life.’. She’s been playing forever, but she gets lost every time she goes to play attack.’’
Just as well, then, that the less glamorous end of the court is still Donna’s domain. Even if she no longer has quite the leg speed she once did.
“I keep saying to the girls at the end of each season, ‘look, I know I’m not as fast as I was, and I can’t keep up’.,’’ Donna says.
“I think I’m sticking on my player and then I have a look and she’s right over the other side of the court and I think ‘how’d she get over there? I thought I was on her!’.
“As you get older, your mind is willing but your body’s not so much. My mind’s going ‘you know you can do it’, but my body’s going ‘no, no, sorry!’.
“So I always say ‘look, if you feel that I’m not keeping up, and you need someone to just come in, I’m OK with it, and you can just say Don, you’re not fast enough'. But they all say ‘no, you’re good, you’re fine, we’ll never get rid of you’.
“So as long as they’re happy to have me I’m happy to play.’
Neither see an end in sight. The Stella’s reached the grand final of their division in 2020, and the duo was also part of a winning team at NetFest 2017 on the Sunshine Coast.
“She still gets intercepts and still gets all the rebounds,’’ says Emma. “She’s been a great player forever. I obviously used to look up to her when I started playing; I started off as a keeper like her, and when I was playing junior club netball she was the manager of the team.’’
Mother and daughter still share more in sport than just the Stella’s. They talk netball. Watch netball. Go to every Firebirds game. Attended the last few days of the 2015 Netball World Cup in Sydney. Then decided there was no better place for a girls’ trip than Liverpool in 2019.
Last year, when Emma was in hospital after giving birth to her first child, Jackson, the pair missed the Firebirds’ drought-breaking win in Suncorp Super Netball. Couldn’t believe the timing, but watched it on the hospital TV. And know that, when the time comes in 2021, they will be back at Nissan Arena.
“We have season tickets for the Firebirds every year; it’s like a standing thing. That’s what I get for my birthday (from mum),'' says Emma.
“Netball has always been something that we can do together and then continue to do together. I’ll be 35 this year and I’ve been playing netball with my mum since I started filling in for her team when I was about 10.
“It’s great. It’s something that we can still talk about all the time, because we watch the Firebirds, we watch every game, so we talk about it constantly, about the politics of netball. Everything. We’re SO into it!”
Both women agree about how much netball has brought to their lives.
Donna: “It’s meant good times for me, and it’s meant a healthy lifestyle - it's the only form of exercise that I enjoy. And meeting new people; the social side’s of it’s very nice.’’
As a fan so keen that she even watches the UK Superleague on her computer at the family real estate business, Donna jokes - or, well, does she? - that she would like to eventually play with her grandkids.
Emma, who took baby Jackson with his grandma to two Firebirds games, and hopes to have a netballer daughter “next”, would not rule it out.
“Not at all. I don’t know how long mum’s going to be playing for. But, I mean, she’s 61 now, and she’s still got it.’’
