TO REMIND NINA

“I take a bit of confidence out of it,” she said.

“If I had played pretty average I would have spent the last 12 months wondering if I fit into the system and whether I can play well at that level.

“At least to have a good game under my belt, that’s not something I have to worry about over the off-season. I know when I come back I have played well at that level.

“It was definitely the hardest (mentally) in that seven weeks where the team was still playing. I think I probably struggled the most when the team would travel interstate and I was left watching from afar. That was a bit of a struggle at times.

“I thought that when the AFLW season was over, people would leave the club and that would make me a bit isolated again. But it ended up being all right in that a lot of people came back for VFLW and there was still a good environment.”

While Morrison wasn’t on field for Geelong’s practice match against the Western Bulldogs, coach Paul Hood backs her to be in Perth for Round 1 against Fremantle on Sunday.

“She’s done a power of work in her rehab and looked as well as a player possibly could look,” Hood said.

Aside from one term of Auskick, Morrison didn’t play football growing up, but was a mad Cats fan.

Even when the AFLW began, she was unsure it would catch on, but once she got a taste for the game she was hooked.

Now a future star of the game in her own right, some of those players she idolised at the Cats growing up stop Morrison in the corridors at GMHBA Stadium and want to know more about her.

“A lot of the players I grew up loving, you see just around the club and they know your name, so it’s pretty surreal for a person who was a mad supporter to be in the same walls,” she said.

“Growing up I was a huge Cats supporter. I followed the men’s footy heaps and my family was big into footy, but women’s footy in a sense had never really entered my mind until a couple of years ago.

“I played a lot of sports and wanted to find something sport-related to do as a job, but I hadn’t found that sport that I wanted to keep playing.

“And then I started footy.

“To live out what I was watching and never thinking I would be a part of it — but was happy to watch — to now get that same opportunity and to see how much it has grown is pretty cool.”