A FRESH START
It’s school holidays right now, which is always celebration time for teachers. Only this time, it’s different.
Last holidays, I went to Europe – Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Barcelona. Incredible places, especially Iceland and Norway.
This holidays, I’m getting ready to move to Sydney, having taken a trade from Collingwood to GWS. I’m finishing up teaching at Ivanhoe Grammar School in November and having at least a year off, finally living the dream of making sport my No.1 priority.
I love my job, especially after starting a girls footy program at Ivanhoe, so taking the year off work was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. It was also tough to leave Collingwood and my life in Melbourne, which I’m very comfortable in. I needed to get out of that comfort zone to keep developing as a person and player.
I’ll spend at least six months living in Sydney. But at this stage, we actually don’t know when pre-season starts. The AFL has yet to finalise that for us.
In an expanded 10-team league beginning in February, it’s been confirmed that we’ll play seven games, with the clubs split into two conferences.
I think the expectation among the players was that with more teams coming in, we’d play more games. Play every team once. Seven games doesn’t seem like the best outcome.
I think most of the players felt that for the competition to genuinely grow, and for the standard to lift, we needed to play more games. In 2019, we’ll still be spending more time preparing for the season than actually playing.
In these early days of the AFLW, where a lot of players are still relatively new to footy, we just want to be given the best opportunity to progress.
The sky is the limit for women’s footy. Just like when I watched the WNBL as a kid, having the AFLW on TV for young girls to watch has been huge.
The sky is the limit for women’s footy. Just like when I watched the WNBL as a kid, having the AFLW on TV for young girls to watch has been huge.
The school kids tell me all the time, ‘Miss, we saw you on TV!’ They get so excited. It builds interest and shows them what you can achieve in the game. They’re kicking the footy at lunchtime. The influence the AFLW has on those kids is huge.
It’s exciting to be part of the game’s growth on both sides, as a teacher/coach and as a player.
When I started footy at Ivanhoe, we barely had one team and we played in isolated events of one day, then two. Last year, we had more than 100 girls playing as a proper school sport.
The girls love it. They want to get involved and play. It’s exciting to see the ripple effect that the AFLW is having and I can’t wait to see what our game becomes.
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