THE FAMOUS Dunkley name

Lara Dunkley, vice-captain of the Queensland Firebirds.

Josh Dunkley, dual and current AFL premiership player.

Kyle Dunkley, playing for the Brisbane Lions VFL side.

Paris Dunkley wants to pave her own way and follow her own narrative to avoid living in her cousins’ shadows. It’s been difficult but she’s stuck to herself and only asked for guidance, nothing to be laid out for her.

In contradiction to Lara, Paris has no aspirations of breaking it into Super Netball and is comfortable in the region of Gippsland.

“I’m just doing the best that I can do, and I think people really expect that I’m trying to be like Lara,” Dunkley told Rookie Me Central.

“Obviously people make comments and stuff, and lots of time the commentators, they always say it, and I’m so embarrassed. It gets a bit annoying, but it’s to be expected that they’re obviously going to say it.

“Growing up in such a sporting family, it’s a bit weird because they’re just your cousins, but to other people, they’re these big sporting people. They’re just my cousins to me.”

Despite Lara’s quick development up the Netball Victoria pathway, Paris started playing netball before the current Firebird. They were two peas in a pod and just wanted the same thing in life. The love of netball.

“Lara actually started playing netball a lot later than me, but my mum played a lot of netball and we were around her netball — she was playing in grand finals and stuff when we were little and we would go and watch,” Dunkley said.

Dunkley couldn’t resist not stepping out on the court for herself and was “itching to play” and started playing the game at 12-years-old. She just “couldn’t wait anymore”.

“We obviously loved it (netball) since we were little, but it helps having a family where everyone plays sport,” she said.

“It would be a Thursday night and I would be looking forward to it (netball) all week and then it would always, always rain on a Thursday night and I would be so sad and they put it over the PA at school.

“I’m just like, no, I have to wait a whole other week.”

Dunkley started playing netball as a goal defence in under 15s in the Gippsland League and loved it. She found it easy to pick the ball out of the air and just float around the court and pass the ball.

“When I started getting older and making it into academies, you sort of start to get told, maybe you should move into the mid court with your height,” the former defender said.

“I was told, if I wanted to go further in netball, I was going to have to probably move into the midcourt.

“I don’t really remember specifically when it happened, how I started doing it, but I’m so glad I did because now if I play defense, I’m like, I can’t do this anymore. It’s too hard.

“I’m very grateful for my coaches that told me to do that because I feel like now I’ve found my place.”

Her place will always be Gippsland. Wanting to just settle at home, Dunkley reassured herself that she wants to stay at home and be surrounded by her family and friends. The three hour drive to and from Melbourne can be tough, but the midcourter relies on others to get her through the several hours of travel.

“I’m doing too much sometimes, I need to just relax a little bit,” Dunkley said. “It’s good that I like driving because otherwise it’s bad enough.”

“I usually stay down with a teammate in Melbourne and sometimes go to the games with others so I don’t have to drive the whole way myself because it gets tiring.”

It was then finally time to kit up for the Gippsland Stars in their first game ever in the Victorian Netball League (VNL). The Stars lost to the North East Blaze in the season’s opening round, 72 – 34.

It was pure chaos with rolling subs happening left, right and centre. It was obvious there were going to be nerves around the whole camp, but to make it nicer, it was a game everyone would rather forget.

“I was actually crapping myself the first game. I think a lot of us were,” Dunkley said. “Everyone doesn’t like to think about that game, we played so badly.

“I haven’t been in the system before, so I didn’t know anyone really but it was nice to have the Gippsland girls.”

It was finally a chance for players in the Gippsland League to be seen. They didn’t have to constantly travel for training in Melbourne but instead were surrounded by faces they knew from Saturdays. The already established connections and friendships are what makes Dunkley happy to be in the Stars family.

“It takes ages to get there and having this is a great pathway for us country girls because we’ve got the talent down here, the Gippsland League’s huge, but the girls that live this far away it’s sometimes so hard,” the 22-year-old said.

She started playing netball at Bairnsdale Football Netball Club as a 13-year-old and has stayed loyal ever since for the last decade. A full season of A-grade was under Dunkley’s belt and she decided to expand her horizons and move to Queensland.

Dunkley made through what was a terrible period of trials to make her HART Sapphire Series debut for the Brisbane South Wildcats. This all came after a little bit of persuasion from her fellow cousin and was quickly putting pen to paper.

“One time I went up and was hanging out with (Lara) for a bit,” Dunkley said.

“I was like, ‘wow, it’s actually sick up here. I love the weather’ and I was like, ‘I don’t really have any responsibilities keeping me anywhere, why don’t I just move up?’”

A lightbulb went off in her head and Dunkley called her mum and dad right away and proposed the idea of moving up north. Both parents were extremely supportive and Dunkley kicked off another life for a year.

She was intending to travel back up to Queensland to stay there for netball, but the newly established Gippsland Stars came calling.

“I was talking to my old club in Queensland,” Dunkley said. “I was like, ‘Oh, I might be staying back. Where do you guys see me?’ They said they would love to have me back, but I have to do what’s best for me.”

“I came home for a bit and then I didn’t really think about playing and then it came up how it would be so good playing the first ever Stars team.”

After experiencing the sunny side of Queensland, Dunkley might move somewhere near the beach with friends to get away from the cold weather of Victoria.

The cold Saturdays of netball is all but familiar for the midcourter with Bairnsdale who have recently seen immense success. They were consistently in the bottom three of the ladder but a breakout year saw the club in finals contention.

“This year we’ve (Bairnsdale) beaten a couple of teams that we’ve never beaten before,” Dunkley said.

“We’ve gone through all these years of not being very good and we haven’t really changed our team that much but everyone’s getting more experience. We’re just chipping away and now other teams have gone down a bit and we’re just building and it’s cool to see.

“You’ve been there through all the times of losing every game, losing all the time, and now you’re starting to beat teams that you’ve never beaten before.”

Dunkley can only describe her experience as pride. Proud of the team for making it so far and overcoming barriers that have stopped them in the last. Youngsters have been getting more exposure to the elite environment and therefore boosting the calibre of performance that Bairnsdale have been putting out.

“All that hard work has paid off,” Dunkley said. “Sticking around in the tough times, whereas if you just get heaps of people to stack your team and you’re always good.”

“You don’t appreciate success as much as if you worked really hard for it. We’ve gone through a lot of tough times and now we’re having some success and it just means more to us that we’ve had to work for it.”

In the meantime, Dunkley works at her local cafe as a barista but aspires to join the police force. But first, she wants to get some life experience and consider options for the future.