Diamonds shooter Donnell Wallam will return to the Super Netball competition, signing with the Sunshine Coast Lightning for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
Wallam spent the 2025 season across the Tasman, playing for the Northern Mystics in the ANZ Premiership, following a three-year stint with the Queensland Firebirds.<\/p>\n
But the 193-centimetre shooter is back in Queensland and joins the Lightning, which finished the 2025 season in fifth, one win outside of the semifinals.<\/p>\n
“I’m really excited to return to [Super Netball] next season, I feel like I still have more to give and more to learn from the league,” she said.<\/p>\n
ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n “Lightning have a good mix of experience and youth and I’m looking forward to seeing how I fit into the team. I’m also loving the idea of living so close to the beach again.<\/p>\n “I play with a lot of passion and flare, and I’m excited to showcase that on the [Super Netball] stage again and in front of Lightning’s passionate home crowd.”<\/p>\n Wallam was not offered a contract by the Firebirds at the end of 2024<\/a>, despite being the second-highest goal scorer in the league that season.<\/p>\n The Firebirds finished that season in last place, parted ways with then-head coach Bec Bulley<\/a> with five matches remaining, and had an investigation launched by Netball Australia into the culture at the club<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Lightning have finished in the top four once in the previous four seasons, and were eliminated in the first round of the 2023 finals series.<\/p>\n Wallam adds firepower to the Lightning front court, which scored the third-most goals in the league last season.<\/p>\n Lightning coach Belinda Reynolds said Wallam’s size and pinpoint shooting was an exciting prospect for the Queensland-based side.<\/p>\n “Donnell has had an outstanding season with the Mystics in New Zealand. She’s an exciting player to watch, and her strength and accuracy are unmatched,” Reynolds said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diamonds shooter Donnell Wallam will return to the Super Netball competition, signing with the Sunshine Coast Lightning for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5844,64,63,24718,49703,49705,49706,588,85,49704,3763],"class_list":{"0":"post-61584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-abc-sport","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-diamonds","12":"tag-donnell-wallam","13":"tag-queensland-firebirds","14":"tag-shooter","15":"tag-sport","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-sunshine-coast-lightning","18":"tag-super-netball"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}