Goals move for Wallam

JUST 12 months ago, Donnell Wallam headed to the Team Girls Cup a relative unknown chasing a chance to nab a Super Netball contract.

What a difference a year makes.

Wallam started last year’s pre-season competition making every post a winner for the Queensland Firebirds to ensure she would pick up a temporary replacement player contract to replace stalwart Romelda Aiken, who sat out the season while pregnant with her first child.

All she needed was an opportunity, a chance to stick her foot in the door, something she did at the Team Girls Cup last year when she starred for the Firebirds.

She then bolted to the Commonwealth Games squad and eventually made her Diamonds debut late last year.

“It’s so bizarre,” Wallam said of the past year.

“Last Team Girls Cup I wasn’t even contracted yet. There was just so much going on. It was kind of like a trial.”

Wallam, 29, is not yet ready to address the Hancock Prospecting sponsorship controversy that surrounded her maiden Diamonds campaign.

But one thing is for sure. After heading back to clubland this season, with the aim of picking up one of those gold dresses for this year’s World Cup in July, Wallam can hardly believe the journey she’s been on the past 12 months.

“So much is different (now), the position I’m in now and yes, it’s going to be a different (Super Netball) competition but it’s surreal,” she said.

Over the weekend, she donned the purple Firebirds singlet again at the Team Girls Cup but this time, Wallam was far from an unknown.

With Gretel Bueta sitting out the season while pregnant, Wallam will take on added responsibility for the Firebirds.

She enters the Super Netball season a marked woman, the target of every team’s circle defenders.

She says she’s up for the task, though. Her performance against Adelaide’s Shamera Sterling – the woman rated by many as the best goalkeeper in the world – proved those words true.

“I was really looking forward to it because I just wanted to improve from last season,” Wallam said.

“So it was about working on the things that I set out to do and I think it was just really valuable for my game and it was really exciting.”

Wallam and Collingwood’s Sophie Garbin are likely to be fighting for one spot in the Diamonds’ World Cup team.

Despite Wallam’s heroics on debut – she broke a deadlock to seal a win for Australia against England with a signature lay-up in the final seconds after a week of intense offcourt scrutiny – she knows she needs to add new dimensions to her game.

“(I’m) just working on being a dominant holding shooter but also adding in other tools to use every now and then – having a variety of things to do so I don’t become predictable,” she said of feedback she had received from national coach Stacey Marinkovich on her game.