Reunited: Angela Bacon, Kate McMahon, Sharelle McMahon, Ros Thomas and Narelle Bacon reminisce about their 1993 A-grade premiership with the Cats. Sarah Tointon, Georgie Betts and Marg Davies were also part of the premiership side, but were unable to attend. Photo: Alexander Dabb
One of the region’s most prominent sporting exports was back in town on Saturday, as Sharelle McMahon gathered with former teammates to celebrate LBU’s 1993 A-grade netball premiership.
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A Cat through and through, a return to Lockington Recreation Reserve brought the memories flooding back for the Sport Australia Hall of Fame member.
“(I have) so many amazing memories from this place in particular, we spent so much time here,” McMahon said.
“My childhood memories really sit around sport in this community; I always loved it, and I think we were really lucky with the incredible support we had for sport here.”
Before winning Commonwealth Games gold medals and captaining the Diamonds, McMahon was starring for LBU, being named in the best in the ’93 premiership win over Koondrook.
“There's a few of us here from the team — not everyone, unfortunately,” McMahon said.
“We’ve just been reminiscing about some of the things that happened with our time together, so it was great.”
One of those teammates present at the reunion was Sharelle’s sister, Kate, with the two reflecting on their time together in the junior ranks.
“Kate and I played a lot of our junior netball together,” McMahon said.
“We used to spend hours in the backyard practising our moves together. We were talking just now about how fit we were as a team, because we had a couple of the boys helping us out with our fitness, Tim Fulton and ‘Small’ MacIntyre.
“We were running suicides and doing all sorts of things, so we were fit and we were really well connected, and a group that just loved playing together.”
That feeling of being connected as a team, born through growing up in a small country community, is something that stuck with McMahon throughout her glittering career, which included 118 international caps.
“For me that sense of connectedness that you have within a team and how important that is,” McMahon said, when asked if there was anything imparted upon her at LBU.
“That was a big feature of this team that we had. We had fun together, but when it was time to work hard, that’s what we did, even though we were freezing in the indoor centre in Bamawm.
Premiers: Sharelle McMahon (back row, second from left) with her premiership teammates after winning the 1993 A-grade Northern and Echuca League grand final.
“We were running laps in there when it was too cold out here, but that was part of it, being able to work hard when it was time, but just having fun and feeling really connected as a group.”
The hard work that started in that indoor centre in Bamawm eventually led McMahon to achieve it all on the global stage, with those achievements immortalised earlier this year at the unveiling of a statue in Melbourne.
Having been involved in coaching roles in both the Victorian and Australian netball set-ups after her retirement, McMahon has since transitioned to a new sport.
She is head of female cricket at Cricket Victoria, overseeing not only the performance pathway for elite cricketers, but also engagement at school age, something she is particularly passionate about, having grown up in a sporting community.
