For the time of the game the players are a single dispersed soul. In winter, when one of their number trips on the ice, they all wince, feel the shock vibrate through their bones, go slow the next quarter. If one of them is wronged (and this happens more often than you would guess – a covert shove, a bib tugged back), the grudge is cultivated by all seven players right up to the final whistle. No matter who scores or intercepts with the greatest consistency, the sum failure or success is absorbed equally between them. It’s only as they split ways that the players come apart for real, arriving home to discover whatever beauty, whatever unbroken totality existed for them those forty minutes on court reduced to a few paltry anecdotes.
I’ve been with my netball team for five years, longer than I have lived in any flat-share, lasted in any relationship, remained in any job. I see my team more regularly than I see my closest friends. I count my team as close friends, too, but it’s a different kind of closeness. Last November a bunch of us took a train up to Manchester for a teammate’s wedding. People kept coming up to us on the dance floor and asking, “Are you the netball girls?” and we would reply in joyful unison, our identities dissolved once more, “Weeeee’re the netball girls!”
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