THE REAL STORY…

I grew up in the 80s and 90s, in Murray Bridge, a 45-minute drive east of Adelaide, on the River Murray. 

My older sister, Jodie, was (and still is, along with my niece!) a huge netball fan. Jodie taught me how to play, mainly so she would have someone to play with, but I fell in love with the sport anyway. It didn’t occur to me that I wouldn’t be able to play competition netball every Saturday morning like my sister until I started school. It was soon made clear to me what the gender norms were: and real boys did not play netball, even if they wanted to. 

A growing, angry sense of injustice grumbled in my tummy until, like George, I wrote a letter to the local Netball Association asking if they could reconsider their rules. Not only did they decline my request to play competition matches, but they also forbid me from taking part in practice sessions, even though the coach and team were happy for me to. 

That ball of injustice in my tummy kept growing, until a teacher at the school, who also happened to be the dad of my best friend Louisa (whose family also went on an exchange to West Germany, in 1989), suggested I write to the Equal Opportunity Commission. They had updated the Act, including laws around gender discrimination in kids sport in 1984...but the local Netball Association had not updated their policies to match.

My letter was successful, and I was able to compete the next year - the only boy out of hundreds of girls in the comp. My inclusion was controversial for some, and I did get extra elbows in the ribs on court. But despite some opposition, the overall response was overwhelmingly positive. And the happiness and freedom I felt on court made any negative aspects irrelevant. 

From this experience, I learned that you can only be truly happy when you are true to yourself - even if it being who you are can make other people uncomfortable at first. This is the lesson I hope to share with people who read this book.