Men's netball on the verge of something great, as Queensland signs a groundbreaking deal and Victoria asserts dominance at nationals

We almost lost him to AFL, but it turns out a few years off netball was just what Australian Kelpie player Josh Byron needed to spark the best form of his career.

Crowned the Grand Final MVP at this year's Australian Men's and Mixed Netball Association (AMMNA) Championships on the weekend, the defender played a key role in Victoria's 44-37 victory against New South Wales in the men's opens competition.

It was just one of four divisions the state claimed at the tournament, also winning the men's reserves, U23s and U17s categories.

Although Byron was donning a darker shade of blue than he had in previous years gone by, he said the decider felt more like a healthy rivalry than a grudge match against his old team.

Especially considering there were 10 national players featured in that grand final across the two sides, and the Australian unit tends to be a pretty tight bunch.

The performance puts him in a great position ahead of Kelpies selection for the Australian tours scheduled later in the year, and cements the 27-year-old's decision to venture back to the game in 2023, after moving states and taking a three-year sabbatical.

Aussie Rules or netball?

Byron's netball career began in the NSW U17 pathway and saw him break onto the opens scene fairly early. By the time he had finished the 2019 AMMNA Championships, playing seven years straight had left him burnt out and looking for a new challenge.

The original plan was to take a year off, move to Victoria and pursue Aussie Rules, but then the COVID pandemic hit and those opportunities started to dry up. By 2022, nationals were back and the Kelpies were invited on a groundbreaking tour with the Diamonds, as Byron watched from afar.

The double header matches played during this trans-Tasman tour saw the men's national team televised for the very first time. It was the push the dynamic goal keeper needed to jump back into his old sport and he hasn't looked back.

"I went down the route of putting myself forward in the AFL pathways as an alternative sports athlete, this was right before COVID and they had some great cross-code pathways at the time, so I was grateful enough to be part of the broader Essendon VFL squad," Byron told ABC Sport.

"But watching those nationals in 2022 in Adelaide, I really missed not being there and when I watched the Australian team later that year in that landmark international event, it showed me that there was some clear progress happening in netball that I wanted to be part of.

"Since coming back into the environment I've never felt more invigorated or motivated to keep improving as an individual and there is so much opportunity now to contribute to the bigger picture, which becomes something you can strive towards and hopefully have a positive influence.

"We really want to maximalise the visibility we're getting in men's netball now and ensure we're giving young men role models and a pathway to look to so that they can pursue the sport they love, and not feel like there is an end date or a deadline on when they can play."

Aligning administration

Byron is just one of the interesting characters in men's netball that often fail to get the recognition and media coverage they deserve, but as netball looks to push for a debut at the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, things have slowly started to improve.

The men's and women's game are still run separately at a national level, but in many of the states and territories there is a push to bring them under the one banner.

Several M-Leagues are being run by member organisations now and boys categories have been added to various underage state titles.

Netball Queensland is thought to have become the first to actually put a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in place with its senior men's team – the Queensland Suns – while Netball NSW and Netball Victoria are in early talks to do the same.

"If the ambition is to truly grow our footprint at a national and international level, particularly with aspirations of becoming an Olympic sport, then these arrangements will help," Byron said.

"There's such an untapped market in men's netball and to know that there's work being done to move towards more aligned support is exciting.

"These MoUs are the right step forward to creating a more collaborative setup, but we're also realistic in knowing that these things don't happen overnight and we're not standing here demanding a Super Netball league for men next year or anything like that.

"There is definitely a brand job to be done around the male game and right now the MoUs are a meaningful sign of progress to get us to that place."

Super Netball recognition

At a Super Netball level, this season the Sunshine Coast Lightning have named official male training partners as part of their extended squad – Jordon Webb and Lachlan Carter.

The West Coast Fever have also signed four training partners on a club-based contract – Dylan McPherson, Dan Cools, Jerome Gillbard and Dravyn Lee-Tauroa.

Training against male netballers is common practice for each of the eight Super Netball sides, but generally for the men it is done as a bit of a thankless task, behind closed doors.

Despite most missing out on any formal recognition, Byron says it's not all take, and that the men do tend to learn a lot from these experiences in the high-performance environments.

"Prior to Lightning this year, West Coast and [the now defunct] Collingwood have probably been the two that have involved a large cohort of males consistently at their clubs," Byron said.

"The Giants had Taylor Glassie as an individual training partner in the past and I know the South Australia boys train against the Thunderbirds quite a lot.

"In Melbourne, the Vixens and Mavericks were super accommodating helping us prepare for our nationals campaign, then we also had the public match against the Mavericks in February which was an awesome experience.

"Those two clubs have offered players from all of our state divisions an opportunity to join in at training, so I have no doubt that those types of formal arrangements will continue to grow and be seen more as time goes on."

Should a Men's World Cup be on the cards?

As well as the double headers staged between Australia and New Zealand over the past couple of years in the international window, men's netball also made its debut in Fast 5.

England and South Africa joined the old trans-Tasman rivals at these events and there are many more countries with men's national teams looking for competitive exposure, such as Singapore, who participated as an invitational team at the AMMNA Championships last week.

Then there's the 2027 Netball World Cup set to be held in Sydney, a couple of years before the Brisbane 2032 organising committee make the call on which Australian local sports to put forward for the Olympic Games.

So, could netball's 2027 event be an opportunity to stage a smaller-scale men's World Cup running parallel to the women's? Maybe that would catch the eyes of the Olympic organising committee?

"There's an appetite from every male player to see something like that happen and we've organised our own world events in the past, I think way back in 2013 was the last one, but crystal balling what the future looks like, whether they decided to align the men's and women's cycles or have them on opposing cycles so you get one major tournament every two years, who knows," Byron said.

"Right now, we use all our annual leave in our full-time jobs for national champs and our Kelpies commitments, and we're still paying our way to play, so there's a lot of sacrifice there.

"We understand we may not be part of the generation that gets to bear the fruits of that, but in 10 years, if we can sit back and be happy for the state of the game, then we'll be proud."

2024 AMMNA Championships results

Men's Open — Victoria

Men's Reserves — Victoria

Mixed Open — New South Wales

Mixed Reserves — Queensland

23/Under — Victoria

20/Under — West Coast

17/Under — Victoria

International Athlete of the Year Award: Liam Forcadilla (NSW)

Emerging International Athlete of the Year Award: Daniel Statton (QLD U17)