17 April 2026
After reaching back-to-back grand finals in 2024 and 2025, North Shore United hope to go all the way in the 2026 Netball NSW Premier League.
The competition, established in 2016, is the top division in NSW, sitting just one level below the Super Netball national competition. Round 1 of the 2026 season will take place on Wednesday, 22 April.
Netball legend Julie Fitzgerald AM, director of high performance at North Shore United, is a Hornsby native. She coached the Sydney/NSW Swifts to five championships, won two NZ Netball Championships, and led the GWS Giants to minor premierships. She was a three-time Netball Australia Coach of the Year and the 2008 ANZ Championship Coach of the Year.
She explained, “North Shore United combines Ku-ring-gai and Northern Suburbs to form a very formidable and very successful franchise that represents us in the Premier League.” The squad is picked from the best players from both clubs to face nine other teams from around the state.
United has been one of the top sides in the Opens division in recent history, winning the premiership titles in 2020 under current head coach Bec Bulley and again in 2022, while both the Open’s and Under 23’s squads led the competition during the COVID-interrupted 2021 season.
Fitzgerald believes the side’s success comes from the squad’s attitude and leadership: “The team culture’s great. We’ve had some tremendous coaches over that period of time, too. We’ve had Brownie Akel, we’ve had Kim Green, and now we have Bec Bulley, all of whom have Super Netball experience as players and are coaching at a high level.”
In the team’s history, 12 players have gone on to compete in Super Netball, including Emily Moore, Erin O’Brien, Matisse Leatherbarrow, Amy Sligar, and Taylor Fraser. Additionally, they recently had three players named in the Premier League Team of the Decade.
More recently, they reached both the 2024 and 2025 Opens Grand Finals, but just fell short of the championship
Coach Rebecca Bulley believes the 2024 loss was a matter of a slow start. “The opposition has got a lead and it was very hard and probably a bit of an unusual place for our team to be in, sort of coming from behind. But I thought they fought back and they performed well for the rest of the game.”
In 2025, Bulley said the pressure of the loss the year before added pressure “I feel like those players wanted to win so badly and they were actually doing really well, but credit for Manly in the second half, they just came out and blitzed. So I think for us, we just kind of need to make sure that we are playing how we’ve been playing all year and not letting the mental side of things impact our performance.”
This season the squad is almost completely made up of returning players, a factor Fitzgerald believes has been a big part of the team’s success: “We don’t have massive changes every year, so the team has been able to grow and develop, and I think they get better every year, and obviously you get more experience every year. Even if it is losing grand finals, you learn a lot from that.”
This year’s squad is a mix of experienced veterans and promising younger talent. Foundation squad member Sarah Corfield will be suiting up for her 11th year with the team.
“She certainly brings maturity. She brings a lot of fun. She’s great in terms of her communication. She has great leadership on the court and off the court. And under pressure, she just performs so well. In those crucial moments when you need to really settle and go back to basics and play your role, she does that really well and calms everyone else around her.” Bulley said about Corfield.
Leisel Millard is a new addition this season but is originally from Ku-ring-gai. Millard was playing for Mounties before returning to the North Shore. Unfortunately, she was sidelined last season with an ACL injury.
Bulley is excited to have Millard on board “I think she brings calmness and she’s a very smart, intelligent player. So I’m looking forward to seeing her return to the court as well.”
Millard joins Eliza Burton, a NSW Swifts training partner who has played over 100 games for Northern Suburbs, and Abby Baker, to make a fast and agile midcourt lineup. Swifts Academy players Lauren Woods and Charlotte Raleigh, who also played over 100 games for Northern Suburbs, will both be on court this season. Woods led the league in goals scored last season.
They join Giants Academy players Violet Wetsteyn and Olivia Harris, who is also an Australia U19 representative.
“She’s an incredible athlete. She’ s very dynamic. She’s very powerful. She’s very strong. She also has a very versatile game as well. She can play across three positions like go shoot a go attack and wing attack. She’s someone that is always prepared to go to the post, let the ball go, and also has a good ability to win the ball as well. So yeah, she’s got a lot of potential and she’s still quite young as well, which is exciting.” Bulley said about Harris.
Tactically, Bulley told the Sun “We kind of play a free flowing, fast brand of netball, but we also are very tight, hardworking one-on-one in defense. But I think probably the strength that we have is that we’re so versatile. We have players that can play multiple positions, but also multiple styles of play. So it can be very hard for the opposition to predict how we’re going to play our style of play.”
Premier League games are played weekly on Wednesday night at Netball Central, Sydney Olympic Park. However, North Shore will host one game locally at 5:30 PM, Saturday, 11 July at Barker College.
The night after Round 1 of the Premier League will mark the start of the Metro League, the division below, where, ironically, Ku-ring-gai and Northern Suburbs will face off.