Netball Q&A: London Pulse GK Hali Adio on the 2024 season
Tomorrow a new edition of the Netball Super League will commence in Nottingham with all 10 teams involved across five matches.
Last season London Pulse topped the table for the first time before losing to Loughborough Lightning in their first final.
But Pulse are determined to go one step further and take English netball’s biggest domestic crown.
City PM asked 25-year-old goal keeper Hali Adio to give us a run down ahead of the season.
What can we expect from Pulse in 2024?
“Fans should expect what they’ve seen from the England netball team. This season we’ve got new players coming in and we’ve really tried to make the league a lot stronger.
“So we’ve got imports and we’ve got players who were in the system. Fans should just expect fun. First and foremost it’s going to be physical, it’s going to be massive. I know it’s going to be good.
“London Pulse netball is very physical. Coming up from junior to seniors, the physicality changes, but I think that’s just because of the strength of us players.
“I’ve been building in the gym and that means you just get stronger. So when you are going on a ball to contest with another player, you’re more likely to make that physical contact.
“I think as well just the way the game is going it is becoming fast paced. It’s very different from how it is when you are a younger player – it’s not dangerous, just physical.”
How big is netball now?
“The publicity from the World Cup has made a lot of people want to watch netball – a lot of my family members who haven’t heard a lot about netball now want tickets to matches.
“We’ve had a few of our matches set out at London Pulse, so it’s going to be extremely good.”
Are you building on your final appearance?
“We really wanted to win that grand final but that was our first grand final. So we now know what to expect. I think there were quite a few nerves and we didn’t know what it was going to be like.
“But we’re ready this year, we know what to expect, we’ve been training hard for it. We’re definitely coming to win the grand final this season.”
Would you ever go overseas?
“When you are younger, you do think: “I want to go to Australia” or “I want to go to New Zealand” because it’s just a different style. New Zealand plays a massively different style to how we play the UK, Australia is the best league at the moment in the world. They are full time and professional.
“A lot of us started netball to be professional athletes so if you go out there and you can make a living and have a job, that is something that everybody wants to do. If that is something that’s on the cards for me, I will definitely take it but at the moment I’d say Pulse is what I’m looking at for this season.”