WATCHING her neighbours play in the mud of the marsh beside her home is how former West Coast ruck Alicia Janz was introduced to Australian Football.

Deep in the Kimberley, the local fire brigade of Derby - Janz's hometown - would carve out a square in the mudflats and fill it with water to play something she describes as "kind of rugby, kind of footy ... they just ran and tried to get goals" in hip height mud.

When the flats weren't filled with water, Alicia and her sister used them as their running track to train for their main sport at the time, netball, which later saw them both play at an elite level, Alicia for both the West Coast Fever and Western Sting.

A proud Meriam Mir woman, their family hails from the Torres Strait but she was raised in Derby before moving to Perth for boarding school.

She began working with First Nations organisation the Waalitj Foundation (formerly the Wirrpanda Foundation) and their Deadly Sista Girlz Program to empower young Indigenous women, which serendipitously led her to the footy field.

"In 2014 I moved to Melbourne to do our Deadly Sista Girlz Program over there and one of my netball friends, Kirby Bentley (former Carlton and Fremantle player, current Western Bulldogs development coach), invited me to go to a football training session," Janz said.

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"I didn't want to go so I offered to just drive her there and wait in the car, but she somehow got me to wait in the grandstand … and then out on the football field.

"I was like, 'No Kirby, you can't just have random strangers rock up to training', but they said it was OK and I was so embarrassed but joined in."

The rest is history.

"When I played my first official footy game, we were versing the Darebin Falcons and the first player I had to play against was Katie Brennan," Janz said.

"The morning of, I'd YouTubed 'How do you handball?' and 'What are the rules?' because I was still unsure, I was just running around not really aware of anything," she laughed. 

Joining Fremantle in the inaugural NAB AFLW season and later moving to West Coast where she joined the leadership group, Janz also became the first Indigenous person on the AFLW Competition Committee.

Riddled by injury, Janz was delisted prior to the 2022 season, but her contribution to the game far outlasts her faulty knees.

Waalitj, pronounced 'Wah-li-ch', means 'eagle' in Noongar language and is based on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja land, now with the West Coast Eagles Football Club at Mineral Resources Park.

The recent name change is attributed to the Foundation's philosophy "a symbol of our commitment to upholding our values so the Foundation, like Waalitj, is able to fly great distances and hold respect wherever it goes".

Janz said her work revolves around enabling young First Nations people to follow their dreams.

"Whether it's gaining employment, further training, sport or some other avenue," Janz said.

"Being at school, there's so much support, and we have Aboriginal education officers as well as ourselves and our programs there to help, but once they graduate school it's like, 'Oh, now you're an adult' and you're left to do your own thing.

"So, we're trying to keep in touch with a lot of those girls and help them with their career pathways or link them into other community support that's available."

Ironically, a few of the girls she mentored in her early days with the Foundation found themselves running alongside her on the footy field.

"I don't know how it feels for them going from that mentor and mentee role to being teammates, but I feel like within the AFLW program, you do tend to take a lot of those girls under your wing and still try and role model what we can contribute within the club," Janz said.

On discussions about Indigenous culture in the AFLW, Janz said it's a nuanced area that people like herself can help navigate.

"When I was at Fremantle, before Indigenous Round was put in place, we still wanted to celebrate our culture and make sure that girls felt empowered enough to share their stories and their own identity within the club," she said.

"Within our communities, we have expectations that you respect your elders, and I think sometimes people can feel a bit withdrawn from contributing because they're not sure whether they have the right to share some of those things, but we can go and check back with the elders and make sure that they're OK with it."

This liaison is crucial for Indigenous girls in the League who Janz said thrive off role modelling, just as she did when Bentley dragged her onto the footy field.

A far cry from spectating at the marsh, Alicia said she hasn't given up hope on making a mud footy debut.

"I actually still think about it and wonder whether they still do it ... I wouldn't be where I am without those experiences."

Alicia Janz will be the 2022 AFLW Indigenous Round Honouree in recognition of her contribution to her community and the football industry