BRÍD DENIED REWARD FOR GAMBLING DOWN UNDER
THE alarming footage of Bríd Stack collapsing and falling instantly motionless has dominated Australian coverage of the AFL women’s tapering pre-season.
The three-match ban given to Ebony Marinoff of the Adelaide Crows for her reckless tackle on Stack on the Cork legend’s debut for the GWS Giants is the longest yet given to a player in the four seasons of the AFL women’s competition.
The league has nine rounds of fixtures so if Marinoff ’s ban stands, she will miss a third of the campaign.
Intense coverage of the incident in Australia reflects its seriousness, but it is also indicative of the enormous growth in popularity of a sport whose development is a useful guide for the indigenous sports in this country.
Since 2017, every AFL team has also fielded and resourced a women’s side. It has had a transformative effect on the sport.
And it is the increasing strength of the women’s AFL that helps explain why Stack, an 11-time All-Ireland winner, seven-time All-Star, and Footballer of the Year in 2016, signed up for a season at the age of 34, committing to an agreement that involves her husband and infant son moving to Sydney with her for more than a quarter of the year.
Stack retired from inter-county football after the 2018 season, and as well as the astonishing success she enjoyed as a foundation stone in the sides led by the late Eamonn Ryan, she left the game remembered as one of its finest defenders.
However, the opportunity to experience even a few months as a full-time athlete was too much to resist when her signing by the Giants was announced last October.
One of her most testing rivals on the football field was integral to the switch: Cora Staunton is preparing for her fourth season in the league, and she was the first to raise the possibility of moving to Australia.
‘Cora said it to me initially after I retired that it might be something to consider, but I hadn’t ever given it too much thought,’ Stack said when news of her signing was announced.
Staunton had also mentioned it to Alan McConnell, the head coach of the Giants.
‘Alan McConnell made contact with me last year and I wasn’t in a position to go as I was expecting. We were talking again this year and we said we’d give it a go,’ said Stack
‘It’s a wonderful opportunity, something we’re looking forward to and a big adventure ahead.’
That adventure entailed a three-day journey from Dublin to western Australia, which started on December 9; a two-week quarantine in a hotel in Perth, which ended on Christmas Day, and then further rearrangements when Sydney went into lockdown following a Covid-19 cluster.
Stack and her family are yet to visit the city that will be their home until the end of March. Instead, they have been staying in a town north of the state of Victoria, where the Giants had set up a base amid ongoing concern in Australia at further disruptions that may lie ahead.
The majority of teams in the AFL are based within Victoria, and in particular in Melbourne, which remains the home of
Aussie Rules. Last Sunday was her first appearance for the Giants as they continued their tune-up for their first match of the season, due against Fremantle on Sunday, January 31.
However, now it is unclear just how much of the season she will get to play at all after a tackle that resulted in her suffering a fracture to one of the vertebrae in her neck.
In a statement on Monday, the Giants said she had been released from hospital and suffered no lasting damage, but ‘will wear a neck brace in the short term’.
Stack’s husband, Carthach, told the Examiner: ‘Bríd still doesn’t have her full strength back, but she will get there. She was lucky, it could have been so much worse.’
STACK’S recovery is expected to take at least six weeks, and her prospects of kicking a ball in her new code look remote at this point.
There remains a strong Irish contingent in the women’s AFL this season, expected to reach at least 13 after 18 players from here featured last season.
What was interesting about Stack’s case was her willingness to move at a stage of her life when many sportswomen are forced to sideline their sporting careers under the pressure of personal and professional commitments.
The sacrifices she has made to move her young family across the world in the midst of a pandemic were noted by the club in the statement they issued this week providing an update on her health.
‘Bríd and her family have made incredible sacrifices to come to Australia and we will be supporting them all the way through her recovery,’ Bri Harvey, the club’s head of women’s football, was quoted as saying.
The AFLW season was cut short by the pandemic last season, and the one about to commence is also vulnerable to the virus and how any outbreaks may affect regional restrictions.
As matters now stand, though, the Giants are due in Perth in little over two weeks for the match against Fremantle. Stack will watch on, hoping her recovery is quicker than expected and the slim possibility of getting back on the field emerges.
She is not the first young Irish mother to commit to a season in the AFL.
Katy Herron of Donegal played all six matches last season for the Western Bulldogs, and was considered a great success.
Plans for a return for this one didn’t work out, and in a recent interview she gave some insight into how clubs are now opting for homegrown talent rather than recruiting from abroad.
‘There seems to be a bigger focus on taking in Australian girls, the younger girls coming through are coming through at a much higher standard than before,’ said Herron.
‘It’s hard to see what the future holds after the pandemic, and all the challenges that brought with international players.’