How Dame Noels grabbed top Aussie coach

It’s a brief moment that will remain forever etched in Briony Akle’s memory; the moment Dame Noeline Taurua grabbed her arm before they faced off in the grand final of Australia’s premier netball league.
It was 2019, and the arch-rival coaches – Akle “still a rookie” with the NSW Swifts, and Taurua a two-time Super Netball champion with the Sunshine Coast Lightning – were walking into the pre-final press conference.
“I’ll never forget it. Noels grabbed my arm and said, ‘Let’s do this together’,” Akle says.
“I just thought ‘You’re a superhuman’, because not many opposition coaches would ever be like that. But that’s Noels – a person first. She cares about people as people, rather than ‘You’re the opposition, you’re nothing’.
“It’s a moment I won’t forget, because I want to treat other coaches like that, too.”
Five years on, they’re ‘doing this together’ again, but this time, they’re on the same side.
Taurua has brought two-time Super Netball champion Akle into the Silver Ferns fold, to be her attack specialist coach for three tests against England, in the Taini Jamison Trophy starting on Sunday, then up against Akle’s countrywomen in the four-test Constellation Cup next month.
Akle, a born and raised Sydneysider, has no problem dressing in black and white, and her four sons (aged 8 to 19) have learned to sing God Defend New Zealand. The youngest has requested she bring an All Blacks jersey when she returns home.
They’re fully invested, she says. But she’s still getting to grips with the culture shock.
Standing on the transverse line with the Silver Ferns opposite the Australian Diamonds in the Nations Cup in England earlier this year was “different”, she admits. “But at least we’ve got that first one out of the way.”
Akle had to think twice when Taurua rang and asked her to join the Ferns, temporarily filling in for her assistant coach Deb Fuller back in January. She wrestled with the concept of coaching a team against Australia.
“But then it was a no-brainer for me to be able to work in this system. The Ferns obviously play a different style to what I’m used to back at home, so to come in and learn new ways – but also be able to give back to them, the things that we do differently – I’m forever grateful,” says Akle, in Auckland for the first time, this week.
“She’s the ultimate coach, who everyone looks up to. And to be able to coach against her and now work with her and strategise, it’s exactly what you want as a high-performance coach. We think very similarly; we look for the extra one percenters in everything.
“I pinch myself every morning that I’m here and chatting everything netty with Noels. I love it.”
Taurua, at the start of her third World Cup cycle with the Silver Ferns, wanted Akle for her insight, her empathy and her no-nonsense, gritty netball philosophy.
“She’s a good person, and her family are so nice. I’m not saying she’s motherly, because when she’s on court she’s ruthless, but she’s got that feel about her, which I absolutely love,” Taurua, a mum of five, says.
“She brings success, she brings experience, and that Aussie hard-nosed approach to everything we do. She’s allowed me and Debs to work in different ways, to have more coaches on the floor, and more coaches giving one-on-one feedback.
“She picks up the opposition analysis as well. A lot of the players we’ll come up against in these series she knows well through the SSN, so she does the groundwork and then we connect in with our performance analysts as well. It’s information that’s so good to have.”
Especially intel on players like relentless English shooter Helen Housby, who’s played for the Swifts for the past eight seasons. And who Taurua describes as the “playmaker” in the Australia-England series that wrapped up across the Tasman this week, with a 2-1 victory to the world champion Diamonds.  
“Helen’s a tough one,” Akle says. “She’ll shoot from anywhere, she thrives on confidence and she loves the crowd. But I think Helen’s weapons are on repeat in every game she plays, and the New Zealand style of defence is something that’s different to her.
“I think we just need focus on doing our job and doing it well as unit, to shut England down.”
Akle never wanted to play netball.
As a shy kid growing up in Sydney’s northwest, she didn’t have the confidence to play sport, preferring just to watch her brothers play. Her mum tried to get the nine-year-old Briony interested in the sport she’d played, but her daughter wasn’t having a bar of it.
“Then she tricked me,” Akle says. “She said we were going shopping, but she took me to netball trials instead.
“She got the coach to come and get me out of the car. And thank God she did. It’s all thanks to Mum tricking me that I’m here working in netball.”
But it unleashed the “competitive beast” in Akle: “And I fell in love with netball, and ever since, I’ve lived and breathed it.”
The NSW Swifts head coach for eight years, Akle has two Super Netball premiership titles to her name – denying Taurua a third title in 2019, and in 2021. She’s committed to the Swifts (who finished a disappointing fifth this year) until the end of the 2026 Super Netball season.
Akle has four sons with her hairdresser husband, Sarkis Akle (they own hair salons together). Sebastian is 19 and has just given up competitive swimming; twins Charlie and Sam are into basketball and cricket; and eight-year-old Xavier has just taken up baseball.
“At first it was a bit of a shock. But the eldest is like another parent, in a gorgeous way, and my partner, Sark, is excellent with the boys,” Arkle says.
“To know they’re championing me by saying ‘Go ahead and have this experience’, makes it a lot easier.” Arkle flew back to Sydney last weekend, after a Silver Ferns training camp in Napier, to celebrate the twins turning 16 this Sunday.
Until now (excluding a brief stint with the Tongan national side), Akle has played and coached within the borders of New South Wales. In her playing career, Akle was a wing attack who made 53 appearances for the Sydney Swifts between 1999 and 2004. She’s still great mates with Swift team-mates and Diamonds greats Cath Cox and Liz Ellis, and former Firebirds head coach Megan Anderson.
With a bachelor of applied science in sports management, Akle first worked in rugby league – in community relations with NRL teams the Sydney Roosters and Parramatta Eels – and got to see first-hand professional coaches at work. Roosters coach Trent Robinson has been a mentor to her.
Akle coached her way through NSW age-group sides, before becoming head coach at the Swifts in 2017 after the sudden departure of Rob Wright (who ended up in New Zealand, where he’s still assistant coach with the champion Mystics side). In 2021 she won the premiership, and was named Joyce Brown Coach of the Year.
Taurua spent a nine-day stint with Akle and the Swifts back in May, as part of their reciprocal coaching arrangement.
“I think our players loved it even more than I did; they didn’t want her to go home,” Akle says. “When Noels asked me to join the Ferns, I asked our senior Swift players what they thought of it. They said: ‘You have to do it, because we get to grow in the Diamonds environment, and you need to go, learn and thrive in your next environment’.”
Once the international window closes, Akle will be in charge of helping Silver Ferns goal shoot Grace Nweke to learn and grow, as she leaves New Zealand to become a Swift.
“I want Grace to come into our environment and thrive,” Akle says. “She’ll find out training to be a little different than what she’s used to here. She’s still young, so she’ll be able to learn how to train on repeat, and learn from Helen Housby and Paige Hadley. Our players already think she’s up there, the world’s best.
“I want her to take little steps – getting stronger in the gym – and be able to play against a different style and hold that for 60 minutes. It’s going to be relentless competition week-in and week-out. I’m excited for her. The next part is being able to be the holding shooter, but also to move and work with that.”
Experienced Silver Ferns shooter Maia Wilson, who could bring up her 50th cap sometime in this international season, is enjoying working with Akle for the first time.  
“It’s so good having a different perspective, particularly an Aussie style. She’s very direct, very positive,” says Wilson.
“Maybe it’s a tall poppy thing within our culture, but I love how she says ‘You guys deserve to be the arrogant ones – you’re the 12 best people in this country right now. So back what your X-factor is.
“She’s pushing us to be more dominant, because I guess as Kiwis we’re not as assertive.”