Paul Scholes is not the only former Manchester United player to have a family link to netball. His “Class of ‘92” team-mates Gary and Phil Neville’s sister Tracey was a leading player, earning 81 international caps. She was also coach of England for four years, memorably steering the team to gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
“The really weird thing was, when I first started, there was this rumour that she was my godmother,” she says. “She isn’t.”
It was certainly nothing to do with Neville that she became intrigued by the sport. The pair had never even met then.
“It started when I was eight or nine and a friend said come along to the Oldham Ball Hall,” she recalls. “I loved it from the word go. As I got into high school, I started doing better. With me, it was something I was good at, so I stuck with it.”
As she progressed through the game, playing for Oldham Hulme Grammar School, then county and national age-group levels, the family support was unwavering. “The message from my parents was always: do what you enjoy,” she says. “It didn’t have to be sport. If I wanted to play the violin, they would have encouraged that.”
Her father appeared to enjoy her progress almost as much as she did. “He’d come and watch, though he’d never be right on the touchline shouting out advice like some dads, he always dropped back a bit. He was never too heavy, never interfered, just supported me, wanted me to keep enjoying it.”
He was there when she first broke into the fringes of the first team at her local Super League club, Manchester Thunder, in the 2021 season. And it was while she was there, often on the sidelines, that she recalls her father first giving her a significant piece of advice. She remembers it largely because she decided to do the exact opposite of what he said.
“I grew up with Dad playing for the same team for so many years,” she says of Paul’s one-club career. “And I wanted to be at Thunder all my career. But it was becoming ever more clear, I had to move to get game time. ‘Stay with them, it will come’, that was his advice. But I had to do what’s best for me, I had to get court time, so I signed for Pulse.”
And she has been proved right in making the move to London. This is the third season since she signed semi-professional terms with the club and headed south. In that time, she has become a regular starter, playing in front of packed crowds at the Copper Box Arena. Last season she was integral to the charge up the Super League, which concluded in defeat in the final against Loughborough Lightning. So good was she, her international debut came against New Zealand last September.
