T&T 'Ca­lyp­so Girls' goal shoot­er Saman­tha Wal­lace-Joseph and New South Wales Swifts look head­ed for a split af­ter eight years to­geth­er in the Sun­corp Su­per Net­ball League (SNL) out­fit, New South Wales Swifts.

This, as ru­mours con­tin­ue to gath­er steam af­ter Wal­lace-Joseph was again ab­sent from their line-up for the sec­ond straight week af­ter first be­ing left out of the team due to a coach's de­ci­sion in a 56-64 Round Eight loss to Mel­bourne Mav­er­icks on June 2.

The Swifts were tied on 12 points with Sun­shine Coast Light­ning ahead of the two sides meet­ing this past week­end at the John Cain Are­na in Syd­ney, but the ab­sence of the scor­ing prowess of Wal­lace-Joseph, now in her eighth straight year with the Syd­ney-based club ap­peared to be bad­ly missed and the vis­i­tors won 66-64.

The club re­mained tight-lipped about their rea­son for drop­ping Wal­lace-Joseph from the side, but they con­firmed in a news re­lease on Mon­day that it had noth­ing to do with a so­cial me­dia in­ci­dent ear­li­er this year when she ques­tioned an over­lap be­tween East­er Sun­day and in­ter­na­tion­al trans­gen­der day of vis­i­bil­i­ty.

The 30-year-old To­co-born Wal­lace-Joseph apol­o­gised and said she was tak­en out of con­text, and Proud2Play, an Aus­tralian or­gan­i­sa­tion, whose pur­pose is to re­duce so­cial iso­la­tion, stig­ma, and dis­crim­i­na­tion of LGBTQI+ folks through the pow­er of sport and recre­ation to cre­ate safe and af­firm­ing spaces for par­tic­i­pa­tion, said the goaler was part of their ed­u­ca­tion ses­sion dur­ing In­clu­sion Round last month.

In­clu­sion Round, which took place dur­ing the fourth round of match­es on May 4 and 5, is an ini­tia­tive of the League to pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cham­pi­on net­ball as a sport for every­one, with na­tion­al in­clu­sive caus­es be­ing high­light­ed by all eight teams.

Each match shone a spot­light on the caus­es that aligned with the host clubs’ or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and team val­ues, and they col­lab­o­rat­ed close­ly with their op­po­nents to en­sure that they were al­so part of the jour­ney to cel­e­brate in­clu­sion.

The Swifts have al­so con­firmed that Wal­lace-Joseph will al­so be un­avail­able for se­lec­tion while they deal with a mat­ter re­lat­ing to be­hav­iour with­in the team en­vi­ron­ment and that it was work­ing with the play­er and her man­age­ment team.

But me­dia re­ports strong­ly in­di­cate that all signs point­ed to the ne­go­ti­a­tions lead­ing to an un­prece­dent­ed ter­mi­na­tion or mu­tu­al part­ing of ways.

Wal­lace-Joseph has been a beloved mem­ber of the Swifts since her sign­ing sev­en years ago and helped the club win two SNL ti­tles and won an in­ter­nal vote to be named the Most Valu­able Play­er of the club three times.

She on­ly re­turned to ac­tion this sea­son af­ter re­cov­er­ing from a ca­reer-threat­en­ing an­te­ri­or cru­ci­ate lig­a­ment in­jury that put her on the side-lines from March 28, 2022, in their sea­son open­er when the Swifts be­gan de­fence of their 2021 ti­tle against Gi­ants, for two sea­sons and al­so forced her to miss the World Cup last year.

Fol­low­ing two years of re­cov­ery, Wal­lace-Joseph made her re­turn to league play on April 13 this year for the Swifts 2024 sea­son open­er against Sun­shine Coast Light­ning.

A three-time NSW Swifts “Most Valu­able Play­er’ award re­cip­i­ent Wal­lace, the T&T net­baller, was al­so a for­mer 'MVP' award re­cip­i­ent in the Eng­land Su­per Net­ball League with the then Hert­ford­shire Mav­er­icks.

Be­fore get­ting in­jured in 2022, Wal­lace amassed 77 ap­pear­ances for the Swifts over five sea­sons and scored 2,720 goals in­clu­sive of 75 su­per shots (two points per shot) for the Swifts.

In her sev­en match­es to start the 2024 cam­paign, she has con­vert­ed 187 of 193 at­tempts in ad­di­tion to sev­en of 16 su­per shots for a ca­reer tal­ly of 2,914 goals, with her last out­ing for the Swifts be­ing the Round Sev­en 58-33 loss to Ade­laide Thun­der­birds on May 25, in which she on­ly con­tributed five goals from sev­en at­tempts.

Over her time in Aus­tralia, there have been in­stances when Wal­lace-Joseph has thought about call­ing it quits, name­ly when her fa­ther suf­fered a stroke, when he passed away, and dur­ing a two-year in­jury re­cov­ery.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port from Brit­tany Carter on the abc.net.au web­site, through dif­fi­cult times, the Swifts have built their rep­u­ta­tion on be­ing a close-knit fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly for ath­letes liv­ing over­seas or in­ter­state with­out a sup­port net­work.

As such, two team­mates were Wal­lace-Joseph's brides­maids at her wed­ding in March and their part­ners were al­so part of the bridal par­ty as grooms­men. Plus, all 10 full-time con­tract­ed play­ers and some train­ing part­ners at­tend­ed the nup­tials be­fore the sea­son start­ed.

Al­though the Swifts are adamant the re­cent is­sue has noth­ing to do with Wal­lace-Joseph's gaffe at East­er, it seems un­de­ni­able that frac­tions in the group start­ed to ap­pear at this point.

The ar­ti­cle al­so stat­ed that fans have spec­u­lat­ed about var­i­ous team­mates un­fol­low­ing Wal­lace-Joseph on so­cial me­dia and delet­ing pho­tos from her wed­ding, but this may be overblown — it ap­pears on­ly one has un­fol­lowed at the time of pub­li­ca­tion and there are plen­ty of hap­py snaps with her team­mates still in her tagged pho­tos.

An­oth­er re­port sug­gest­ed Wal­lace-Joseph failed to turn up at the air­port for the Swifts' flight to Mel­bourne last week, but the shoot­er had been dropped from the team and it is un­com­mon for a play­er out­side the top 10 to trav­el un­less it is for lead­er­ship rea­sons.

Should Wal­lace-Joseph and the team part ways, the league would al­low the Swifts 21 days from that date to name a re­place­ment – tem­po­rary or per­ma­nent – and it could be any play­er they wish. It does not have to be one of their train­ing part­ners.