My sister is a ‘hero’ for working 10,500 miles from her young son, says Gary Neville
FORMER England netball coach Tracey Neville is working in Australia while her three-year-old child is cared for by her partner and mother 10,500 miles away in Britain, her football pundit brother Gary has revealed.
The ex-Manchester United and England defender has told of his pride that Tracey – twin sister of his younger brother, exEngland footballer Phil – made a decision to split her time between two different ends of the world.
He said it illustrated the drive and ambition in his family and said what she was doing gave her ‘hero status’.
Tracey, 46, has one child, Nev, with her partner Michael Timmins, a care home boss. After coaching England to a bronze medal at the 2019 Netball World Cup, she retired to concentrate on starting a family, but insisted she wanted to return to coaching as soon as possible.
After giving birth in 2020, she was hired to work with the Adelaide Thunderbirds, and then moved to take up a two-year contract with the Melbourne Mavericks.
Speaking on The Mid Point podcast, Gary said: ‘What Tracey’s done in this last month sums us up pretty much to a tee.
‘She was supposed to go to Australia for six months and that was it. And then she’s gone back for two years.’
Gary spoke to the podcast after having just visited Tracey’s son at their 72-year-old mother’s home. Explaining that ‘Tracey’s over in Australia on her own’, he said his sister’s arrangement was ‘mesmerising’.
He added: ‘For her to actually leave a child, go over there for her professional career, and her professional ambition – to me that’s hero status. She has that ambition, that drive, that determination.
‘I’m sure one day Nev, her little boy, will be proud of her and will recognise that’s what she wanted to do.’
When podcast host Gabby Logan suggested that people wouldn’t question a man leaving his family for work, Gary said: ‘No. She makes me really proud – ultimately that’s the way my mum is. My mum plays netball every single Monday, Thursday, she won’t stop, she will do her own thing – my sister is like that.
‘I am proud of that, that there is that drive and determination.’
Tracey’s son is named after his grandfather Neville Neville, who died aged 65 in 2015.
Tracey and her partner were given only a ‘five to 12 per cent chance’ by doctors of having a successful pregnancy. It took five rounds of IVF and two miscarriages before their son was born.
Tracey, from Bury, Lancashire, has previously spoken about balancing motherhood and work. She said: ‘You [think] about your identity, what drives you. Although I have a gorgeous little boy, I feel like the physical and mental toughness that I’ve been through over
‘She has that ambition, that drive, that determination’
‘You do not want to keep Tracey Neville locked up’
this – the lack of sleep, doing the same thing every day – has made me realise actually I do miss that part of my life. I absolutely adore motherhood, obviously, but coaching is part of who I am.
‘I never thought my job was an obstacle, never at any moment, because I had so much family support – my partner Michael would do anything to support my ambitions. My father always said, “You only get one opportunity at something”, and that was my opportunity, and I was choosing to step away from a role that I considered myself quite successful in.
‘When you’re a new mother and you get locked up, that’s definitely not the place you want to keep Tracey Neville, trust me.’
Getting back to the job she loves, she says, will always be secondary to her family, but she has said her partner has, for now, taken over daytime duties with their son.
‘We’ve sort of flipped roles. You’re giving power to someone else now and I think that’s been really hard. At times I was the one Nev went to first and emotionally that was really hard to accept.
‘He [Nev] knows what Mummy does, and I’m being a role model to him because he doesn’t want to play football, he wants to play netball. That’s something that his uncles might not be too happy about.’