Such was the growing reputation around the talented teenager, even Australian netball great Ellis was aware the NSW Swifts had found a good’un when she burst onto the scene 17 years ago.
The buzz around Green was that the schoolgirl was an awesome athlete destined to make an impact on the national league.
“I’d also heard she had a terrible temper,” Ellis recalled.
“But she had great passion and drive and I knew from the moment she turned up she was something special.”
Green, now at the Giants, will play her 200th elite game in Sunday’s Suncorp Super Netball Round 2 meeting with the Vixens in Melbourne.
The 33-year-old’s vision and feeds have dismantled defences at all levels of the game.
She was part of the Swifts team that swept aside its rivals to win consecutive premierships in 2006-07, a Diamonds debutante in 2008, a dual world champion and a Commonwealth Games gold medallist in 2014.
In 2014, she was the trans-Tasman netball league’s most valuable player, and over the years has established herself as an outstanding and graceful captain, both for Australia and her domestic clubs.
That kind of polish takes years to attain, and it all started when Giants and then-Swifts coach Julie Fitzgerald invited her as a 16-year-old to NSW training.
She would arrive at those sessions wearing her school uniform, and from the outset she was a competitor.
Playing with and against netballers twice her age, Green never backed away from a contest.
Her grit was an asset but following a grudge match against the Melbourne Phoenix (now Vixens) in the former national league, Ellis felt it needed some direction.
“She was fiery. She got into a battle with Ingrid Dick and I told her she couldn’t do that and gave her a dressing down,” Ellis said.
“She didn’t speak to me for a few weeks, but I knew she took it on board.
“Kim was always very sure, and I like that. She became very calm and I think that makes her a great leader.”
The Giants skipper jokingly suggested she hasn’t changed.
“Although I don’t know about fiery. I was cheeky,” she said.
Fitzgerald had a liking for players with spunk and Green fitted the model.
“Every opportunity I had to challenge the norm, I took it,” Green said.
“Senior players put me in my place from time to time, but it was because they were invested in me. I knew I was on their radar.”
She has conceded she wasn’t the best player in her age group but has endured almost two decades at the top, even overcoming a serious knee injury in 2017 to remain one of the most influential midcourters in Super Netball and one of the sport’s most marketable figures.
Since retiring from international netball after the 2015 World Cup, the wing attack appears to have beaten the lower leg niggles that affected her final years at the Swifts.
“I think that gave her a new lease of life,” Ellis said. “She’s happily married, playing for fun and achieving heaps of stuff. She’s playing like she has nothing to prove.”
