Super Netball: Romelda Aiken-George has spoke of the drive that kept her going as she sets an incredible new record in the game.
The competitive fire that drove Romelda | 01:09She was super, super skinny . Really raw. She was just out from Jamaica as one of our first imports…Goal keepers were getting flogged week on week by this girl shooting an unbelievable amount of goals; about 40 per game, which back then was a lot.
I remember one poor old keeper saying publicly, “Oh God, if Romelda shoots 40 on me, I’ll be horrified. ”‘Ah, that’s not gonna happen to me’Romelda Aiken in action for the Firebirds against West Coast Fever in 2008. So that was how Australian netball met Romelda Aiken, right back in 2008 with the Queensland Firebirds. Vicki Wilson signed her after an astonishing World Cup debut with Jamaica.
She was a homesick 19-year-old who’d barely played elite-level netball, but we fast realised how good she was going to become.
“She may become the best goal shooter in the world,” a just-retired Liz Ellis said early in that first season of the new ANZ Championship. “Longevity is what separates good players from great players and if she can keep this up for a long time, she will undoubtedly be one of the best ever. ”Romelda Aiken takes on Liz Ellis during a 2007 Jamaica v Australia Test in Melbourne.
Romelda started with a hiss and a roar in that first season, made herself very comfortable in the Firebirds line-up and brought them lots of success; three premierships , plus league MVP awards in her first two seasons and another in 2015. And on Sunday, she will break my games record with her 255th national league appearance when West Coast Fever play the NSW Swifts at Perth’s RAC Arena.
I’ll be courtside, commentating for Fox Sports, and will get the chance to interview Romelda afterwards. That’ll be fun. I don’t normally cover the Perth games, but Fox changed things up for Sunday in recognition of a big moment for netball. An emotional Cath Cox with a young Liz Watson after her 254th and final game: a Melbourne Vixens grand final win over Romelda Aiken’s Queensland Firebirds.
Honestly, I don’t love it! I’ve heard other people say,– which is all true, but no one wants their record broken. But for me to hold it for 12 years after retiring was special and it’s awesome that she’s the one to break it. I’m rapt for her.
Romelda has been around for a long time, she’s reinvented herself a thousand times over and she’s still playing brilliant netball. Romelda Aiken after winning the 2015 grand final, in her third MVP season. At 196cm, Romelda was one of the first really tall, holding goal shooters. Her accuracy was unfailing and she had a level of athleticism that we really hadn’t seen in our national league before.
She was the full package. And because she was so raw in the early days, she was so coachable. Starting out under Vicki, the legendary Australian Diamonds shooter, was the perfect place to land. She was probably a big part of why they brought in the Super Shot, because she was just so dominant and the ball ended up under the post every single time.
Other players entered the league after her with similar attributes, most notably her fellow Jamaican Jhaniele Fowler-Nembhard, but Romelda led the way. Source: News Corp Australia Just look at what has followed with the imports. Super Netball is now the undisputed best league in the world, where the top stars from every other country aspire to play. Most teams have at least three imports in their side, and that’s the way we want it.
While there are complaints about not having enough squad spaces for Aussies, you want the best players in our competition, from New Zealand and England to South Africa and Jamaica. And don’t forget the rise of Jamaica as an international netball force. We now have stacks of Jamaicans playing in SSN, including elite talents like Jhaniele, Shamera Sterling-Humphrey and Latanya Wilson, and it was Romelda who blazed the trail.
It will be really interesting to watch the impact Jamaica can have over these next couple of years at a Commonwealth Games and a World Cup, stacked with all these players who have thrived in SSN. Nerve-wracking, actually. They have become a genuine threat to the traditional top nations like Australia. Shamera Sterling-Humphrey, Latanya Wilson and Romelda Aiken-George of the Thunderbirds after winning the 2024 grand final.
When West Coast Fever came to Sydney to play the Swifts back in Round 4, I was courtside watching Romelda Aiken-George closely. In the warm-up, she didn’t do much. Nothing like the rest of her team. Which probably makes sense, given she made her national league debut when teammates like Ruth Aryang and Olivia Wilkinson were literally in kindergarten.
She shot a career-best 67 goals and Fever won by 20. But you can see the years of experience in how she now plays. She knows how to move her body, how to protect herself, how to play certain defenders, how to take a pass and deliver that information back to those who are feeding her. Romelda Aiken-George has the Fever competing for an unlikely finals spot.
As soon as Jhaniele went on maternity leave this year, we figured Fever wouldn’t play finals. Even after Romelda signed, there were big questions; how was her body holding up at the end of her career, and how switched on was she going to be having already decided to retire?quickly. Romelda has helped West Coast to third, and they seem likely to stay in that top four.
It’s amazing that she’s still been playing in top teams at this late stage of her career. She’s just a winner. After an unceremonious split from the Firebirds as she became a mum, she joined the NSW Swifts and took them to a grand final in 2023; a loss to Adelaide. She joined the Thunderbirds the following season and won a fourth premiership, 13 years after her first, with a grand final MVP award to boot.
The opportunities came knocking and she clearly wasn’t done with her career. You have to give her credit for hanging in and playing on when it would have been so easy to call it a day. She clearly loves the game so much and just wanted to keep playing for as long as she possibly could.
Squad Spaces Games Record Changes England Skinny Phenom Finals Spot Goal Keepers Australian Netball Games Record Final Game North America Melbourne Oceania National League Debut Latanya Wilson International Netball Force Played Elite-Level Netball Super Netball Holding Goal Shooters Holy Crap America Cath Cox Super Skinny National League Appearance National League All-Time Games Record Grand Final Northern Europe Vicki Wilson Australia And New Zealand Victoria Europe Africa Olivia Wilkinson Elite Talents New Zealand Liz Watson Single Time Southern Africa South Africa Special Column Tribute Australia Caribbean Jamaica Game-Changing Icon Sydney Jamaican Legend
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