Anna Stanley

Who is Anna Stanley?

Anna Catherine Stanley MNZM is a New Zealand netballer, who captained the national team, to win the 2003 Netball World Championships in Jamaica.

She led the Silver Ferns to a drought-breaking series win over Australia in the winter of 2004, and played for the Auckland Diamonds in the National Bank Cup national league in 2004 and 2005.

Stanley represented Otago, Canterbury and Auckland in New Zealand's top Netball league. In 2004 she suffered a knee injury during the Silver Ferns' clean sweep series win over arch-rivals Australia. In 2005, after several months of rehabilitation, she returned to the court for the Auckland Diamonds. She returned to the Silver Ferns in October of that year, and was a member of the Commonwealth Games gold medal–winning team of March 2006.

Stanley is married to current medical surgeon and former Auckland and All Black rugby union player, Jeremy Stanley. Only a few weeks into the 2006 National Bank Cup season, she announced that she was pregnant and would be retiring from netball to concentrate on her family life, thus ending a fluctuating but successful career on the court. Stanley was named in the Waikato-Bay of Plenty Magic squad in New Zealand's top netball league in 2007, however she did not play this season for the team in the league.