Scottish Thistles Head Coach, Tamsin Greenway, announced today that she has appointed Sara Francis-Bayman as her Assistant Coach as she prepares to kick off her Commonwealth Games 2022 campaign. The Loughborouigh Lightning Head Coach is no stranger to the Scotland side as she played alongside many of the Thistles athletes as a Siren in the 2018 Vitality Netball Superleague season.

After retiring as an athlete at the end of that season, she took on the Head Coach role at Loughborough Lightning leading the team to the Semi-Finals in her inaugural season and going on to win the 2021 League Final this June at the Copperbox Arena in London live on Sky Sports. An ex-England Roses athlete who has an accomplished playing career which includes a season in New Zealand with Central Pulse where she made the Grand Final, Francis-Bayman brings with her a wealth of expertise and passion that Greenway is excited to bring into her Thistles programme.

Tamsin said of her new Assistant Coach: “Getting the right assistant coach was crucial as we continue to build, grow and develop here in Scotland. Sara and I both came through the high-performance programme at Bath and played together for a long time. She is a smart, driven individual who knows how to win and more importantly knows how to get the best out of players. After her season at Sirens she understands the setup here, what works and what needs to be pushed on. I know the players will be excited to have someone with her class on board and I can’t wait to start working with her this summer”.

Sara Francis-Bayman shares Tamsin’s vision for Scotland and is excited by her new role, saying: “Scotland are a rapidly improving team who have a huge amount of potential and I’m looking forward to working with Tamsin to help them to challenge at the highest level. I’ve known both Tamsin and Karen for a long time and couldn’t miss the opportunity to work with them to take the Scottish Thistles to the next level. We’ve seen how much talent there is in Scotland through the Sirens’ performances and I hope to contribute to that potential being transferred into results”.

Karen Atkinson, who was recently announced as the new Performance Director for Netball Scotland added: “It is important that we prepare the Thistles in the best way possible heading into a Commonwealth Games year and then into the Netball World Cup. It is fantastic to be able to add a coach of Sara’s calibre to Tamsin’s coaching team. Sara was an exceptionally smart player. She understood the game and its dynamics extremely well and she has now transferred that to becoming a title-winning coach with Loughborough Lightning. Her hunger to win and her drive for player development is second to none and we need that ruthless, winning mentality within our Scottish Thistles squad if we are to achieve our ambitions in world competition”.

Netball Scotland CEO, Claire Nelson, is excited by the powerhouse coaching team that she is building in Scotland. “We know we’re a small nation with a lot of work to do to be able to truly compete with and challenge the top nations on the world stage. But what we have already proven through Sirens this past season is that we have the raw talent, passion, and belief to punch well above our weight, and when this is underpinned by world-leading coaching expertise, we are giving ourselves the best shot possible to go into world competition and achieve our targets.”

She continued: “The introduction of Sara to our national programme is incredible. When I think about the Coaching team that we now have here in Scotland I have to pinch myself, but we are under no illusions about the scale of tasks ahead of us. However, we are all so ready to take on this challenge together as one connected, empowered team. Watch this space because we mean business!”

Greenway and Francis-Bayman will both be in action together for the first time next week when Scotland hosts Wales and Northern Ireland in a weekend of friendly match play.

Netball Scotland is delighted to announce the promotion of Karen Atkinson into the new role of Performance Director. Karen joined the organisation two years ago as Technical Director for Strathclyde Sirens and in that time has developed one of the most professional and effective training programmes in the Vitality Netball Superleague (VNSL) which resulted in the team achieving its best-ever season result since joining the League back in 2017. Despite leading the Sirens team on match days this season, behind the scenes Karen has been working with the Netball Scotland Performance Team, including new Scottish Thistles Head Coach Tamsin Greenway, to develop an enhanced performance pathway and programme for Scotland which she will now strategically lead for the organisation.

Karen says of her new role: “I am excited about the prospect of taking the knowledge I have gained through many years of working within a variety of high-performance sporting systems and applying it to the challenges and opportunities we have in Scotland. There is so much untapped potential in this country that simply needs the right environment, support and programme to thrive. Being able to work with and empower quality people such as Thistles Head Coach, Tamsin Greenway and Sirens Head Coach, Lesley MacDonald, only makes this opportunity more exciting. I am looking forward to working with them, to thinking creatively and to moving our International and VNSL programmes forward”.

Karen’s appointment to Performance Director comes after the implementation of a full organisational review and restructure as a result of COVID which included the successful recruitment of a new COO, Stephanie Karvelis, who starts in post today. CEO, Claire Nelson, is excited by this injection of expertise into the Executive leadership team and believes that Karen can lead Scotland’s performance programme and pathway to the next level: “Karen has more than proved what she can do in terms of developing high performing programmes, attracting talent and empowering players and coaches to realise their potential. Now I want to empower her to do this on a national scale for us, building a powerful, effective and sustainable programme that enables Scotland to achieve our ambitions both domestically in the Superleague as a professional Club and on the world stage where we have set ourselves some challenging targets.

I believe that Karen Atkinson is one of the best Coaches and strategic minds in our sport and together we are building one of the strongest high-performance coaching teams in world netball because we believe in, and are investing in, Scotland’s future on the court. Her appointment to PD feels like a really natural evolution of her role at a really critical time for the organisation. I’ve seen her plans and cannot wait to see what she and the Performance Team deliver over the coming seasons.