Opals star Cambage to make WNBL return

BASKETBALL: Liz Cambage will play club basketball on home soil for the first time in five years, signing with Melbourne Boomers for the new WNBL season.

The 203cm Melburnian has not played at all since the Opals’ disappointing Rio Olympics campaign last year, but now returns to her roots.

Cambage, 25, played with the then Bulleen Boomers as a teenager, winning the 2010-11 WNBL premiership.

She was one of the few leading lights at the 2016 Olympics, when the Opals failed to medal for the first time since 1992.

She has previously played for the Tulsa Shock in the WNBA and also in China, most recently in 2015.

“I am so excited to be playing in front of my home town after so many years competing overseas, and it is especially thrilling for me to be rejoining my Deakin Melbourne Boomers family,” Cambage said.

“I have such wonderful memories at the club and we have high hopes as a team of replicating that again. I am so happy to be at home.

“I have said for some time now that I wanted to remain a Melbourne girl and this is step one in the process before hopefully representing Australia at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in 2018.”

The new WNBL 16-week season starts in October and ends in January, with Fox Sports to show live at least one game a week, ending a broadcast blackout for the league.

The Boomers have also signed another former club premiership star in Jenna O’Hea, who last played in the WNBL for Dandenong Rangers. She plays for the Seattle Storm in the WNBA.