The national squad that toured England in 1963 contained five Victorian players, pictured above at practice in their gold Australian uniforms (Left to right: Margaret Caldow, Wilma Ritchie, Joyce Brown, Jeanette McIver and June Noseda).
Captained by Brown and coached by Lorna McConchie, the Australian team - with an average age of just 21 - won all their matches against county sides, and were then victorious in all 10 of their international round-robin games at the Chelsea College of Physical Education at Eastbourne, including a one goal win over New Zealand. Based on this remarkable performance, they were deserved winners of the first-ever World Championship (now known as the Netball World Cup).
Before arriving in England, however, the Australian team spent more than a month at sea on the Canberra, as they sailed first to Sri Lanka and then onto England, rising at 6.30am on most mornings to complete shipboard training drills. While they were assisted with some living expenses, each team member had to raise their own travel funds. According to McIver’s scrapbook of press cuttings, necessity was the mother of invention, when the Victorian players banded together to buy, and then raffle, a car, making a profit of £1,200 to cover their portion of the fares.
There are several items in Netball Victoria’s Edith Hull Collection related to the Australian tour of England in 1963, including photographs, newspaper cuttings and assorted memorabilia. The above rare image is from the collection of Alice Doyle (née Murray), another Victorian, who represented her country between 1945 and 1954.
