Irene van Dyk

Irene van Dyk grew up in Vereeniging, an industrial town south of Johannesburg, and was tall, awkward and shy. Netball gave her somewhere to put her height. She was a goal shooter of freakish accuracy, regularly scoring over 90 per cent of her attempts, and she played for South Africa from the country's return to international sport in the 1990s, including the World Championship final against Australia in 1995. She was also a primary school teacher, because netball did not pay.

In 2000 she and her husband decided to move to New Zealand with their small daughter, partly for safety and partly because it was the only place where a netballer could make something like a living. It was a hard start. She knew no one, and there was resentment in South Africa at losing its captain. Within months she was picked for the Silver Ferns, and some New Zealanders grumbled about that too.

She won them over by playing for 14 years. She was part of the team that won the World Championship in 2003 and Commonwealth gold in 2006 and 2010, and she played 145 Tests for New Zealand on top of 72 for South Africa, more than anyone else in the history of the game.

She retired in 2014 and went back to teaching and coaching children.