There always has been a bit of harmless sibling rivalry between Ashlee Cann and her brother Nick Allan.
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Allan kicked off his Shepparton career a couple of seasons before his sister, revelled in premiership glory in ‘‘that’’ 2018 flag while Cann’s A-grade side fell by a single goal, and knocked over game 350 in June.
But now it’s Cann’s time in the sun.
The dynamite defender hits Deakin Reserve for her 300th club appearance on Saturday when the Bears take on Kyabram, where she’ll hope to edge closer to a second premiership which has proved oh so slippery.
“In my first season at the Bears I was B-grade and we happened to win the premiership that first year,” she said.
“I haven’t got one since, but that was obviously a highlight being your first year.
“You think ‘this is all right’, winning a premiership, and 20 years later you still haven’t got another one.”
Cann has gone on to become one of the Goulburn Valley League’s most decorated defenders, but basketball was her game in the early days.
She was a serious talent in the sport, following a few of her Shepparton Gators comrades along to the Bears where she could try her hand at netball while being an arm’s length away from Allan where a cheeky dig in the ribs was never out of reach.
And though a switch from the hardwood to the outdoor court was fun at the time, Cann was steadily dribbling towards her dream as a basketball player.
“I think I was about 20 when I got an opportunity as a development player in the WNBL with Perth, so I moved over there and had a crack there,” she said.
“I actually got injured towards the end of the season, so I moved back home and that's when netball started for me really.”
While playing netball upon returning to Shepparton, Cann recalls a memory still crystalised in her brain for the impact it would have on her sporting future.
It was the night she met Bears coach Tracey Brereton.
“I actually remember the first time I met Tracey at a night comp and she watched our game that night,” she said.
“I just remember her telling me that I could sleep in that bib and keep it and from there we've been together ever since.
“The good thing about Tracey we can talk things out, we can discuss things and I can pick her brain and still at the age of 37 I learn every week from her.”
Under Brereton’s guidance ― Cann has only served the one coach while playing A-grade ― the Bears’ bastion has gone on to win nine club best-and-fairests from 2008 onwards, seven of which were in succession.
She is a member of the A-grade leadership group, served five years as assistant coach of the 17-and-under side and is a life member of Shepparton Football Netball Club and Goulburn Valley League.
Cann said she was always known as the ‘’basketballer who played netball’’, but proved the pack wrong when she finished runner-up in the 2013 Wellman Family Medal count
“I think that was the season that I really thought that I’d kind of done it, if that makes sense,” she said.
“It was a huge, huge surprise. I would not have expected that at all.
“I think I went along that night as support and then to be coming into round 18 on equal points with the winner coming down to the last round, I felt like I won that night.”
But with the highs come the lows and Cann is far from exempt.
She said the injury in Perth which sullied her promising basketball career was a bitter pill to swallow and the 51-50 grand final loss to Echuca in 2018 ranks high among her most stinging memories.
“(To lose by) one goal in an undefeated season is still pretty sore,” she said.
“We’d been in the grand final a couple of times and got shocked the last time, but we really had a shot at it and it just didn't fall our way.
“Echuca played brilliantly, but we didn't have what we had all year and it came down to the final seconds and we couldn’t pull it off.
“And then to have Nick winning it and me not win was a bit of a kick in the guts.”
Sure, Allan did claim family bragging rights that day.
Cann may have a few choice words for her brother come September, however, with Shepparton’s A-grade netball side looking likelier than its senior footy component to make a dent in finals.
A second premiership may provide a cathartic release, but its not the reason why she turns up each week.
Loyal servants are a dying breed in sport nowadays and, by osmosis, Cann and Allan have shown Shepparton’s next generation of football and netball players what it means to live and serve, through win or loss, right until the end.
“I think it's something that obviously Nick and I have strived to do,” she said.
“We've just stayed at the one club and worked through all those years where we weren’t anywhere near finals and just staying loyal.
“But when you think about (playing 300 games), it is a pretty big achievement.”
Senior Sports Journalist