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It was June, the Collingwood Magpies had just won their final Super Netball game, and Nicole Richardson had tears rolling down her face.
After five years pouring her heart and soul into the club, three of them as head coach, to beat a top-two-ranked side like the West Coast Fever felt somewhat like a consolation prize in a bittersweet end of an era.
A month beforehand, Collingwood, under different leadership than when its netball team was established in 2016, had decided it would no longer continue.
Bottom line, its netball program wasn't making money and the administration had grown tired of splitting its investment in women's sport, preferring instead to channel its efforts solely into AFLW.
From that low to the high of winning a Netball World Cup in August as an assistant with the Aussie Diamonds, Richardson was brought back to earth just last week.
Almost three months down the line, watching the Pies development team win the Australian Netball Championships (ANC), there she was again, wiping away tears and thinking of what Collingwood netball could have been.
"I was there in my role as an Australian under 21s selector for Netball Australia, but I couldn't help but get caught up in the emotion of it all," a proud Richardson told the ABC.
"It brought tears to my eyes because we've had a really tough year at Collingwood and to end the way the girls did, I guess it was a fitting finale to what's been a very emotional three months."
Four of those ANC players — Olivia Wilkinson, Montana Holmes, Casey Adamson and Zoe Davies — had been involved with the Super Netball team as training partners the past two seasons, while midcourter Zali Anderson's performances saw her rewarded with Australian U21 selection.
Their success was a satisfying justification for what the Pies had been building in recent years.
And although their Super Netball team finished with a second wooden spoon in 2023, Richardson and five Collingwood players reached the podium at the World Cup in Cape Town, highlighting the incredible potential of their talented group that never quite clicked into gear at club land.
Looking back, the coach points to the closeness of the league and reiterates her side was only one win behind the Giants in sixth place and two behind the Lightning in fifth.
Despite being so heavily criticised, the Pies also won a pre-season Team Girls Cup (2019), a Super Club Tournament (2019), two ANC titles (2018, 2023) and reached the finals three times across a seven-year journey in Super Netball – including as recently as last year.
That's twice more than current champions the Adelaide Thunderbirds, or even the Queensland Firebirds, both foundation netball clubs with 20 years more experience.
Were we too hard on Collingwood? Sure, their brash start in the netball scene may have put people offside, as they claimed to be the team to beat in their foundation year.
But that was likely football talking. Meanwhile, their netballers would face a similar struggle for respect, adequate equipment, and resources to everyone else.
In those early years the Pies gave the impression they were the flashy new kids on the block, with incredible facilities and a star-studded side planning to conquer it all.
What has since come to light is that their netball department was poorly set up, treated as a second-rate priority, and run by football administrators who thought they could reinvent the wheel.
As Linda Pearce reported for Code Sports, the netballers trained with short goalposts and a rock-hard unsprung floor at Collingwood HQ, often needing to clean up the mud on the court's surface before they could start a session due to their AFL counterparts walking it in from the footy field.
Reflecting on the club's decision to make their Super Netball team defunct, leaving the coaching group and players searching for new jobs, Richardson said it still felt "gut-wrenching".
"I went through the emotions of disappointment and frustration, and there were times there that I was also angry at the club for not backing us in," she said.
"I get it; sport is business. And I've been reminded quite recently that, yes, there are pros of being involved with a massive beast like Collingwood, but at the end of the day they are a football club and their number one aim is football.
"There's been a changeover of the powers that be. You had Eddie McGuire and Mark Anderson in the beginning who had a vision moving forward and netball was a part of that, but over time the club decided our sport wasn't good for it financially and so we were on the end of that."
Richardson's recent reminder has been the non-existent support for any of the netball program's achievements beyond its final Super Netball game.
Collingwood did at least follow through with its commitment to participate at the ANC, but there has been no promotion of its success at that tournament, nor of its athletes at the World Cup.
"Once Round 14 against the Fever was finished, that was it for pretty much anything netball related," Richardson said.
"There were no socials regarding our five athletes and myself at the World Cup, even after the Diamonds become world champions, and nothing for our ANC team."
The message was clear: "Collingwood is a football club preparing for finals."
Despite this, and her conflicting feelings on how it all ended, Richardson doesn't like to play the blame game.
"I mean, you can put blame on various different groups, but everyone has a part to play, including the team itself, and to get bums on seats, you need wins.
"We probably didn't have as much success overall as we could have. However, I think we still played an exciting brand of netball and were able to do some great things as a relatively young club.
"I understand you have to look after the club as a whole, but I don't think any of the Super Netball teams are making money, and I also believe there's a lot more to having a team outside of the bottom line, in terms of what it can bring.
"Nike got on board at Collingwood due to the female athletes there, of which our netballers were a part of, so there's more that goes into it, but I don't necessarily blame anyone. Sport is business."
As she hunts for the next opportunity, Richardson says she is keen on linking up with the incoming SEN-owned team set to take Collingwood's place in the Super Netball league from 2024.
English legend Tracey Neville has already been assigned as head coach and the side's roster seems to be taking shape in an unofficial capacity behind closed doors, as everyone waits on the collective pay agreement (CPA) to be negotiated.
Richardson's preference is to stay in Melbourne, but until the CPA is in place, she's in a holding pattern, waiting to see if and where a domestic spot will open up for a specialist coach.
"I'll start training a few of the Diamonds based in Victoria this week for the Constellation Cup and the South Africa series following that, which we're really excited for and looking forward to," she said.
"Post that, I love Super Netball, I enjoy working at that level and I still think I have a lot to offer, so I'm a bit like a lot of the playing group at the moment — stuck in limbo.
"For head coaches, their main aim is to lock in their 10 players once we get the CPA sorted and then they can start officially signing people, including us coaches.
"I'm reading about it in the media just like everyone else, but it looks like there's a lot of movement this year as some look for opportunity and others look to freshen up and continue to develop their skills after being under the same coach for a period of time."
Speaking from experience, Richardson says SEN will have its work cut out for it trying to compete with the Netball-Victoria-owned Melbourne Vixens, who have such a stranglehold on the market.
The state database — which has been spoken about at length, and Collingwood was never able to obtain access too — will be key. As will be signing some big-name Victorian stars.
There have been reports that Roses shooters Sasha Glasgow and Eleanor Cardwell are headed to Melbourne to play under Neville, and Richardson concedes there is no rule in place to prevent the former Commonwealth Games gold-medal-winning coach from signing an all-England team.
"No, there's nothing there currently to stop that, but Tracey is a very smart coach with proven success, and she understands the landscape and what you need to be successful off the court," she said.
"She'd be well aware that they don't want to fall down the same path as Collingwood, so they need to be able to fast-track a support base. And building your entire team around an English playing group could cause some hiccups within Victoria … I can't wait to see what team she pulls together.
"Obviously the state database is something a lot of clubs rely on to get the message out about Super Netball too, so that's something the new team is going to need to have a look at too and seeing whether something can be done with Netball Victoria or Netball Australia in that area.
"I guess the biggest thing regarding SEN coming on board though compared to Collingwood is that netball seems to be their number one priority, and that's going to be a key difference."