Twelve months ago, Rebecca Stower’s Bull Sharks team was the great surprise packet of Queensland netball - an emerging group that came from 15 goals back in a grand final to win their first Hart Premier Netball Premiership.
This year, the element of surprise is gone.
All season Bond has played with a target on its back.
Stower’s seen it in the way other teams rise to the moment when they play the defending champ.
She’s heard it in opposition smack talk.
And she’s also seen it in recent game results.
Even though the Bull Sharks have already locked in a top four berth courtesy of a string of early season wins, three defeats in just seven days has definitely inspired a bit of pre-finals soul-searching.
Stower concedes things have definitely been a little more challenging recently.
“Sport is like that,” she says. “Sometimes it’s bloody hard.”
And with twenty-twenty hindsight, she reckons this moment may have been brewing for some time.
“Some of the girls haven’t stopped since October last year,” she says. “They’ve been pulled in all sorts of different directions for a while now.”
The reigning Premiers entered 2026 with several key members of the squad simultaneously called into the Firebirds Reserves program.
This meant Bond's successful core was training at Firebirds HQ in Brisbane and that made it difficult to build the combinations and cohesion that had underpinned the previous season’s performances.
On one hand, having players selected for an elite environment is evidence that Bond is developing exceptional athletes.
On the other, the demands of that environment have left her without some of its most important players for long periods.
“Success can be a curse and a blessing,” Stower says.
It's physically and mentally draining, especially for student-athletes.
“Up and down the M1 to train with a large squad for what is sometimes fairly small exposure in terms of actual game time is pretty tiring," Stower says.
“The girls don’t ever complain about the game time element, but they want to do well.
"They want to take that next step into that whole Suncorp Super Netball world, but I guess it can sometimes feel a bit like they're caught somewhere between the two places they want to be and perhaps as a result it isn't delivering what they thought it would."
There is another challenge - one that is perhaps more difficult to quantify.
And that’s expectation.
Bond's extraordinary 2025 grand final win changed the emotional landscape around the team.
The outside chatter has been hard to ignore.
Noise from elsewhere in the netball bubble. Comments from opposition players. The suggestion that last year's premiership might have been a one-off.
Stower has had to remind her players that their success did not begin and end with one big, beautiful season.
“They're not one-hit wonders,” she says.
For young athletes operating in an elite sport with an extraordinarily narrow pathway to the top, every opportunity can feel disproportionately important.
Stower describes netball as ‘an extremely pointy pyramid’ with opportunities become increasingly scarce as athletes progress.
And with Suncorp Super Netball franchises regularly inviting overseas players in to top up their rosters, that pyramid’s point domestically has become razor-sharp.
The result can be a distracting fixation on the next selection, the next squad or the next opportunity.
Some of her players, Stower says, are justifiably asking questions about their immediate ambitions in a ruthlessly competitive game.
“What’s my purpose? What’s my dream? Where does all this sit? It’s all entirely understandable.”
Her response has been to strip things back.
Rather than trying to solve every problem, she’s asked her players to focus on what they can control.
That process involved getting the team to talk openly about the pressure they are experiencing.
The exercise revealed something important - that they are not alone.
The burden of success. Pressure to perform. Fear of letting people down.
The same themes kept emerging.
“Everybody was kind of feeling the same way,” Stower says.
That shared experience has helped shift the conversation from individual failure to collective perspective.
The pressure is real and feelings are valid, but in context they are not necessarily useful.
“What we can control is what we do on the court and how we are with and for one another and appreciating that everybody is feeling somewhat the same way,” Stower says.
And that brings her back to the quality that she believes made Bond so dangerous in the first place.
Freedom.
“I just want to see the girls play,” she says.
“I want to see that love for the game that we all share.”
Stower wants her players to stop allowing those uncontrollable things to dictate what happens next.
The memory of last year's grand final is a lesson in itself.
What still remains so powerful about that performance is not merely the result – it’s that the Bull Sharks were never going to die wondering.
“We've got trust. We've got love. We've got joy. We've got unity,” she says.
“We’ll be okay.”
“We don't necessarily need to go and fix anything broken.”
The 2025 Premiership changed Bond's status. Expectations have increased. The system has stretched its resources. Young players are confronting the brutal realities of elite sport.
None of that can be wished away.
But as finals approach, Stower's message is a simple one.
Stop worrying about what everyone else wants.
Go out and play the game.
Above all, enjoy it.