Gilmour's Vision Fades With National Netball Swan Song

Newcastle Herald

Friday August 3, 2007

By NEIL GOFFET

INAUGURAL chairman Greg Gilmour had a vision to make the Hunter Jaegers the first independently owned and professional team in the national netball league.

Ironically, it was a decision by Netball Australia, three years later, to lift the profile and professionalism of the sport that signalled the end of national netball in Newcastle.

Tonight will be an emotional farewell for the Jaegers as past players, including foundation skipper Raegan Jackson and Kimberlee Gilmour, Greg's daughters, are paraded around the court, just four months after his death.

Tears will be shed for reasons many and varied, but the main stream of emotion will be dealing with the loss of national netball from the region.

Gilmour, Tony Munro and David Gazzoli were the original board members, but their vision to make the club an independent business rich in sponsors and supporters did not sit well with authorities.

"Sleepy [Gilmour] was the one who put the committee together. He chaired the committee and he was very passionate about the Jaegers," Munro said.

"He got me on the committee as payback for getting him involved with junior rugby committees in the past.

"He also got David Gazzoli on the committee. Our goal was for the team to be competitive, for our sponsors to be long-term associates of the team, and eventually we wanted to be an independent business.

"We had the highest crowds and were the most financial club in the competition, but we kept asking questions and pushing the wrong buttons, and Netball NSW and Netball Australia didn't like that.

"At the end of the second year the three of us all reapplied for our positions on the board, but they got rid of all three of us."

Netball NSW, the governing body for national league teams Jaegers and Sydney Swifts, also terminated the contract of coach Maria Lynch at the end of 2005, just after she signed a new three-year deal.

Jon Fletcher took over from Lynch and became the first male coach in the 10-year history of the national league as rumblings of a trans-Tasman competition started.

Those rumblings sparked a storm by the end of last year when it was known a combined competition with teams from New Zealand would reduce the number of elite teams in Australia.

There was also a cloud hanging over Fletcher after he denied inspirational Novocastrian Raegan Jackson a fitting farewell from the game by benching her in the final quarter of her last game.

Jackson showed amazing professionalism dealing with the disappointment at the time, in the same way her father wanted to take professionalism in the sport to another level.

© 2007 Newcastle Herald

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