THE HIGHS AND LOWS

Q

You’ve given so much to the club but so has your family. Your son Tyler plays in the senior side, your husband is still heavily involved and your daughter Casey volunteers and cooks meals. Is the club like a family member?

A

Absolutely. Both my daughter and son would say the club’s probably above them! We’re all involved, which is great, but I do probably spend a lot of time there. But it’s only for six months of the year. They are definitely my other family.

Q

After the 2017 grand final, the club had one of its darker days when players were caught doing burnouts and serious damage to the oval. How does a president go about responding?

A

It was one of the hardest weeks of my life. I don’t think there’s been too many presidents that have had to deal with that sort of media hype. What happened was terrible and never should have happened but the aftermath of that was pretty horrific and something I’d never dealt with before. I was getting people hurling abuse at me, anonymously of course. I’d never really dealt with the media at that level either. I’d always done interviews after the game when it was for a good thing like winning a premiership but this was the other side. It was quite hard and a week of my life it took away dealing with police, Council, the media, the committee, players and social media. I wasn’t trained for that but we got through it.