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AFLW: The Western Bulldogs player who delivers four babies in one night

Samantha Lane

Doctor Tiarna Ernst is on the phone.  From the kitchen table in her share house, she's arranging for the sheds of her local footy ground to be unlocked and opened.

The ripped-fit 28-year-old is patting her greyhound Macer (Latin for skinny and entirely apt), during the phone call, and when she's not talking she  shifts her mobile phone slightly so she can multi-task.

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She continues running through her weekly schedule, which was the topic of discussion before she pushed some buttons to get our next move sorted. 

In detailing the responsibilities she juggles in a diary running tight as a drum Ernst explains why her household buys food, and makes meals, almost exclusively in bulk. Simply: it guarantees she is regularly nourished in the irregular hours she keeps in an exceptionally busy life.

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Ernst is efficiency personified and, for the time being at least, that's not a question of choice as much as necessity.

Honing her medical specialty in obstetrics and gynaecology, Ernst is in a night shift cycle at Monash Medical Centre when we meet.

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That means being out her front door at 8:15pm to start work at 9pm. At Monash she delivers three or four babies a night (her record in a shift is eight, her total in the last 24 months is 495) before returning home around 9am.

At the end of these back-to-front working days, Ernst has some breakfast, typically goes for a light run and then sleeps for between five and six hours.Then she does it all again.

After a week, she's back on hospital day shifts, meaning the entire routine is upended.

Throw in her fresh status as Western Bulldogs Football Club player, her devoted fitness, football training and playing regimes,  and Ernst scarcely has time for essentials - shopping, cooking, cleaning – quite aside from non-vocation related pleasure.

Books, music, films, good or even trashy TV to switch off?  The truth is time doesn't allow. While she's juggling this way Ernst's "play" time comes whenever she's on a footy field, and even that's covered by an employment contract now.

"Macer! MACER!" Ernst exclaims after the keys for the nearby footy dressing rooms are sorted.

"On your bed. ON YOUR BED!"

Macer is messing with background noise while we're recording but once peace is restored it's back to the potted history of the AFL's most eminently qualified listed player.

Born on Thursday Island, in the Torres Strait archipelago in Australia's Top End, Ernst grew up in a remote community numbering roughly 2600.

She lived on Thursday Island for 11 years with her parents, who were local teachers. The barge that provided fellow residents with fresh fruit and vegetables came once a week.

With snow white complexion, Ernst and her three brothers  were odd ones out physically. Appearance did not translate to feeling.

"We were immersed in an amazingly raw and welcoming family culture of the Torres Strait Islanders up there," Ernst recalls with  fondness.

"It was very much an outdoors lifestyle, rich with culture, love for family and a support network in the community.

"We lived off the land. We went fishing on the weekends and that was generally what we ate throughout the week. My dad was an agricultural teacher at the high school at the time, so he taught us how to grow crops and grow fruits and vegetables.

"That's how we lived for the majority of our years when we were in primary school."

On Thursday Island there was no debating whether females played AFL footy or not. No one played AFL footy. 

"There was a small following for NRL football," Ernst says. 

Ernst became aware of the Brisbane Lions' existence but did not see an AFL match on television before she went to university.

She was first exposed to the code earlier, but only fleetingly: after one of her high school teachers in Mossman, where the family moved to from Thursday Island, organised a one-off AFL game between their school and a neighbouring outpost.

All arms and legs, Ernst had developed into a strong runner, hurdler and high jumper. She was a state representative in the latter athletic discipline and soon enough fixed her eyes firmly on the Olympics.

"I made a pact with myself in primary school that I would go to the London 2012 Olympics and was pursued by Little Athletics with that goal in mind," she recalls.

"I remember watching Cathy Freeman win the gold in the 400-metre sprint at the Sydney 2000 Olympics and I desperately wanted to be there.

"I remember sprinting against the Indigenous Australians back then and mum reckons that's how I got my speed, I had to keep up. I was thankful to get to national championships for a number of years in high school, then I had to make a hard decision. I was given an opportunity to continue my sprint hurdles at the time, given an opportunity to train with Sally Pearson's coach in Brisbane. But I didn't have any money and so I decided to go to university instead. That was something that my family could support me in and so I went to medical school to become a doctor."

Ernst travelled to another far north Queensland town: Cairns.

"It was in Cairns I ran into some of the girls that played for the Mununda Hawks women's football team. They welcomed me into their team and that was where I started to play football."

There was a four-team women's competition in Cairns and the naturally athletic Ernst was instantly a standout recruit, selected to represent Queensland at national championships in her debut season.

From game one for Mununda Ernst was played in the ruck. It gave her an athletic sensation – addictive as it turns out – she'd never experienced before. 

"I ran and ran and ran all day and it was endorphin rush, walking off that field knowing you'd given it your all, everything you had, and despite how exhausted you were you just wanted to run out there with your teammates and do it all over again."

When Ernst was drafted by the Western Bulldogs in November, one of the first people she called was Mununda Women's Football Club president, Fiona Sharp. 

"I said 'thank you for helping me pursue this dream'.

"She welcomed me into that team with open arms and really encouraged me to improve my skills so I became one of the most dominant players in it."

Playing for Mununda saw Ernst kiss her childhood Olympic dreams goodbye. Upon graduating from medical school, she took up her first internship in Ipswich, west of Brisbane, where she lived for two years. It was from this vantage point that Ernst absorbed another game-changing moment in her life: watching the first AFL-sanctioned women's exhibition match between league clubs, Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs, in 2013.

"It was so exciting and so inspiring," Ernst remembers as if it were yesterday.

"I made a commitment to myself after watching that game that I would do everything possible to better my football and do everything I could to be running out there with those girls one day."

This personal pledge led Ernst to search for positions in her medical field of expertise in Melbourne, which she viewed as AFL Mecca.

"I think things happen for a reason because I came across a job at Monash Health," she says.

"They welcomed me, embraced the diversity in my background and the team leadership that I got from playing AFL."

Ernst was asked, in her job interview with Monash, why she wanted to move to Melbourne. Her answer was that she intended to become an AFL player. The AFL, at that point, had still not even announced it would create the women's league that commences in February.

Ernst didn't know a soul in Victoria when she got the job at Monash. That changed virtually overnight after she joined the Diamond Creek Women's Football Club based in Melbourne's outer northeast.

The men's' Diamond Creek club was original home of Coventrys and Shaws, though the sides are not connected, each being independent entities.

Ernst's first point of contact for finding a football home in foreign territory was Jess Smith, then working for the Victorian Women's Football League. Smith steered Ernst to the president of Diamond Creek Women's Football Club, Darren Logan.

"I chose Diamond Creek because they returned my email within 20 minutes of me sending it," says Ernst, who ticked off yet another life goal when selected by Melbourne to play in the AFL women's exhibition match last year.

"Darren found me housemates, he found a house for me to live in. He's another person who has had a huge impact…helped me pursue my dream.

"Moving states took me away from everything I knew, all the security and the safety of my family in Queensland, but it turned out to be the best decision I've ever made."