From Ballarat to bronze medals: Robyn Maher on her incredible career

The WNBL Life Member and FIBA Hall of Famer is one of Australian basketball's great winners

Credit: FIBA

When Robyn Maher started playing basketball, her hometown, Ballarat, didn’t even have a stadium. By the time she retired, she was an Olympic medal winner, and Australia were firmly on the world basketball map.

Maher has recently has been named as one of three 2023 inductees to the Basketball NSW Hall of Fame. “It’s an exciting thing,” she tells The Pick and Roll of the honour, which comes after being named to FIBA’s version in 2022. “Not too many people get to be in a Hall of Fame. Now, I’m in a few of them, but it’s always an exciting feeling, to be welcomed and honoured.”

The daughter of VFL footballer Jim Gull, Maher started out playing tennis and netball but switched to basketball when some enterprising teachers from the Macarthur Street Primary School in Ballarat decided to recruit netballers to the somewhat obscure sport of basketball. The team played out of the local YMCA, and Maher had to compete up an age group, but it didn’t matter. One of the great careers in Australian basketball was underway.