SETTING The Scene is a pre-season series ahead of the 2024 NAB AFLW season, which starts on August 30. Picking up on storylines from last year's season, which ended in a second premiership for Brisbane, the series will also take a more holistic look at what is involved in a pre-season.

Star netballer Ash Brazill has hung up her runners. After thinking she'd play one season of AFLW, she's now entering her eighth, but this time, at a new club in Fremantle. How does a veteran athlete deal with being a newbie? What drives her to continue playing elite sport?

ASH BRAZILL and partner (now wife) Brooke moved from Perth to Melbourne to help pursue Ash's dream to play netball with the Australian Diamonds.

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Playing in the national netball league for Collingwood, she was also drafted by the Pies for the club's AFLW team ahead of the 2018 season, and hasn't looked back.

Having capped off her netball career with a world championships gold medal, the Brazill family – now complete with four-year-old Louis and two-year-old Frankie – have returned home to Perth, reuniting with their extended families.

It's meant Brazill – who's 35 at the end of the year – has walked into Fremantle as an elite sporting veteran, but a Dockers newbie.

"Walking in as basically a 34-year-old rookie has been a bit strange, but I honestly feel like I've been at that club for years. They're so welcoming. I couldn't be more happy where I am, even though I still sometimes feel like that rookie, but I'm okay with that," Brazill told AFL.com.au.

"If other players had played eight seasons, they've done all the pre-seasons, whereas I've come in with a couple of weeks to go (after the netball season), then have to wait until round three when my body is right. So as much as it's been eight, it's probably been about four in total.

"The culture in AFLW is second to none. It's still so young, it's still so exciting, it's still so raw, and it could be absolutely anything it wants to be. With netball, sometimes it does feel like a job, because it’s a hundred years old, whereas we're still trying to build up a brand.

"Now having a daughter, I look at her, and she's not throwing a netball, she's literally just tackling her brother. The fact this little girl can play absolutely any sport she wants, and it could be a career, blows my mind, because when I was a kid, that wasn't a thing.

"I honestly thought footy was just a one-year thing, and I thought netball was definitely going to pull the pin at one point. They tried, but I wouldn't allow it. I absolutely love playing it and I'm still learning. 

"I think that's the exciting thing, and that's probably why I was ready to hang up the netball shoes, because I got to that point where, like, 'Well, what's next?' And with footy, there's just so much to learn."

This won't be the first time Brazill has played footy in Western Australia.

She nearly had her netball contract with West Coast Fever torn up after she was busted playing WAWFL on the sly in 2012.

"I played under an alias name. I was playing netball with Fever at the time, and I had played footy as a kid. Kirby Bentley – who I knew from netball – called me up, they were short a few players for a couple of weeks at East Fremantle," she said.

"I can't remember what the name was (records appear to have since been corrected to read "Ashleigh Brazill"), but I played for five games. I was lucky enough – or unfortunate enough, because I got in a lot of trouble – to get rookie of the year from my five games.

"It meant I was in the paper. (Legendary Australian coach) Norma Plummer was the head coach of the Fever at the time, and called me in to have a meeting with her and the CEO.

"I thought it was contract talk for an extension, because I'd won player of the year with Fever. Anyway, I walked in, and on the CEO's desk was the paper, with me on the page. 

"So I got in a bit of trouble, but looking back, I wouldn't change a thing, it was unreal. I've always loved footy from such a young age. And the fact I could have a game here and there – not knowing AFLW was going to be a thing – I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

Brazill – rejuvenated by an epic seven-month family caravan trip through Victoria, up to Cairns, dodging floodwaters on the way back down to Adelaide and across the Nullarbor – is now entering her first AFLW season without having already played a top-flight netball season.

"It's actually been my first full AFLW pre-season. I normally come back from netball with two or three weeks before round one, so it's completely different, it's probably the most running I've done in my whole life," Brazill said.

"Saying that, I've had a bit of a hit and miss pre-season. I broke my finger early on, so couldn't do a lot of ball skills, but the positive out of it – I've always questioned my running and I know my game is more about speed and short bursts. 

"So I got to really focus in on trying to get my endurance up, which I thought I would enjoy, but I'm definitely not a runner."

The increased running loads have somewhat changed Brazill's physique, and there's been a mental switch also needed to adjust to the new norm.

"I always felt like my strength and my size was more to do with footy, being a lot more physical and all that, but I think that's really one thing I've noticed, is that I'm now a bit lighter, weight-wise," she said.

"But the good thing is, I'm still able to lift the same amount of weight at the gym, but I just don't feel as heavy. The comfort is that I've had these talks with our S&C coach, because I like to feel strong, or even just mentally strong. They've given me the confidence that while I may not look the same, I'm just as strong, if not more.

"Looks-wise, if I feel strong and look strong, then I know just mentally, 'look out'. So I'm just trying to now find that confidence in myself, and know I don't need to look as strong, because I can actually do the same things, but now with more endurance."