“HAN, THIS is how you kick a footy.”
We may have been drafted together, but there were about nine years and a lifetime of footy experience that separated me from my new teammates.
I’d started playing footy just two years before being drafted to St Kilda in 2019 as a 27-year-old ahead of the club’s first AFLW season. My fellow teammates were younger, drafted with the picks well before me, and had been playing footy for most of their lives.
And yet, we all landed at Moorabbin together.
Since then, this ragtag bunch of teenagers and I have grown together, adjusting to the rigours and routines of the AFLW world.
It was a real shared leadership experience, because while I had the life experience, they had the footy experience.
They taught me how to kick a footy, I taught them how to manage their time and adjust to being an athlete in a high-performance environment.
The best part of having a front row seat to their development has nothing to do with their footy.
It’s been seeing them grow as people, watching their confidence, competence, belief in themselves and their team-first attitude flourish.
It’s been watching them listen, absorb, respect and learn from their leaders and then becoming leaders themselves.
It’s been watching them play not for themselves, but to represent their families, the club, the fans, and the future of the sport.
Despite being talented footballers, they’ve never let that get to their heads or rested on their laurels.
Instead, they’ve shown incredible discipline in sacrificing things that their friends and families can do, like traveling the world or partying late into the night. They’ve decided to invest in being the best footballers they can be, which is still a personal choice in an elite competition.
They’re still the kind and empathetic girls that came to the club all those years ago.
From cheeky and giggly Liv Vesely, whose ‘FEAR ME’ mouthguard started as a joke, but became a portent of things to come as she grew in skill and stature, to the inseparable duo of Georgia Patrikios and Nicola Xenos, who are connected like sisters, always looking out for each other both on and off the field while their families flood the forward flank full of adoration for their girls.
Our local product Molly McDonald, who has become a poster girl for Mornington Peninsula football after being one of the first AFLW players signed by the club. And the magical talent of my inception teammates, Nat Exon and Darcy Guttridge. I’ll never have the football smarts they do, but I am so grateful they’ve shared their knowledge with me.
They might not realise it while they’re head-down working on becoming the best players they can be, but they’re having a huge impact on not only the AFLW competition, but on this old girl here too.
All in all, I’m just so proud of them all. Not only our seven girls that remain as a part of our inception team, but the influence of all our teammates that have worn the red, white and black and contributed to our team environment.
It’s been a collective growth, one that is special to the Saints and one that’s key to whatever success we may have in the future.
I may be older than most of them, but these girls keep me young!
“Han, you’re kind of like our aunty.”
Hannah Priest is St Kilda's AFLW captain, and you can catch her in action when the Saints take on Fremantle in AFLW Week Five on Friday, September 27 at 4.05pm AEST.
