Malawian goaler Mwai Kumwenda, who grew up playing on dirt courts with a netball made of melted plastic bags, is one of just two Melbourne Vixens not born or raised in Victoria. But in leading her side to Super Netball premiership glory in Brisbane on Sunday, the 31-year-old showed she has plenty of Victorian in her veins.
Kumwenda was added to the state’s elite pathway after being scouted by Rosebud coach Maxine Wauchope at the 2009 World Youth Cup in the Cook Islands and subsequently moving to Australia.
Disciplined, consistently putting “we before me”, cool under pressure and showing just a bit of mongrel when required, she embodied everything on which Victorian netball prides itself. She was a deserved MVP in a heart-stopping spectacle befitting the best netball league in the world.
While the Victorian influence on Kumwenda’s game was obvious, her own distinctive skill set, refined on the world stage in Malawi colours and during a stint with the Canterbury Tactix in New Zealand, was also on full technicolour display.
In one standout moment in the second quarter, taking a seemingly impossible feed, she performed a graceful netballing arabesque, somehow balancing on one leg before duly sinking the shot – all without getting called for held ball. Broadcaster Liz Ellis aptly described the feat as defying “the law of physics”. Not bad for a player who only “got serious” about netball at age 17 and left everything she knew behind to pursue her dreams.
Matching up on one of the world’s premier keepers in West Coast Fever captain Courtney Bruce, Kumwenda put in arguably the finest performance of her career on the biggest of stages, in the strangest of seasons.
Notwithstanding the triumph of being one of the first major leagues to complete a mid-Covid season, courtesy of a hub deal with the Queensland government, 2020 is a year many in the netball world may want to forget.
But this affair was not characterised by repeated, ugly controversies on and off the court. It was all about the on-court action and, as it turned out, a fairytale finish for a tight-knit team which left locked-down family and friends at home almost 100 days ago, with no idea when they would return.
Coach Simone McKinnis, overlooked for the national coaching job in late August, and her charges will return with their first national title since 2014. “MJ got player of the match [and] Courtney’s [Bruce] been playing really well – she’s been getting a lot of ball and putting a lot of pressure on opposition, so MJ played a critical role in…keeping her busy. But also with the feeders not having any fear putting the ball over to MJ because she’s going to get it, and she did…and finished it really well.”
While much of the focus in the lead-up to the grand final was rightly on Melbourne’s retiring shooting stars Caitlin Thwaites and Tegan Philip, it was the hard-working Kumwenda who shot 47 (from 50 attempts) of the Vixens’ goals to drive her side to an emotive 66-64 win. She did not miss at all in the first half and sank the match’s final goal – a traditional “one” – after Fever goal attack Alice Teague-Neeld, a Victorian discarded by both the Vixens and Collingwood, missed a super shot attempt at the other end.
After the miss, Vixen defenders Jo Weston and Emily Mannix, who came through the Victorian pathway together, combined for a rebound over Jamaican giant Jhaniele Fowler, who did all but win the game for her side with 55/56, including an uncharacteristic two-pointer on the half-time siren.
In the dying moments Kumwenda had a chance at a super shot to extend the win to four. The miss meant her match was limited to one-pointers. That will be considered a win for traditionalists who have loudly and consistently argued the game does not need gimmicks such as the two-goal shot to be thrilling. Thwaites did shoot three, though, and the Fever three as well.
Kumwenda, who missed most of last year after a knee reconstruction, shot 10 in a row in the second quarter to thrust the Vixens back into the game after Fever dominated the first term. She did not just shoot, but also finished with three goal assists, four feeds, one gain, one intercept and two rebounds.
As Sharelle McMahon, the Vixens’ assistant coach who was unable to travel to Queensland for the season, noted after the game on social media, it was a truly complete performance worthy of the “double guns” stance Kumwenda employed in post-game celebrations.
One of the game’s all-time great shooters herself, McMahon has been an important mentor, no doubt sharing some tricks of the trade learned on the asphalt courts of regional Victoria and employed on the world stage. It turns out Victorians – even when they hail from a different country – really do it better.