AFLW: Erin Phillips wins competition's inaugural best and fairest award
Football tradition turned on its head. Dramatically. Touchingly.
The setting was familiar: a black tie function, men and women dressed in finery, a three-course meal, speeches and a vote count.
Then, the season's best Australian Rules footballer was announced by the AFL's chief executive. And the best player, on this unprecedented night, was a she.
She was Erin Phillips.
And as of last Saturday, she was not merely an Australian Olympian but an Adelaide Crows premiership player.
When AFL boss Gillon McLachlan declared on Tuesday, that 14 votes from umpires made Phillips peerless in the eight-week inaugural AFL women's season, the winning footballer smiled. She then kissed her wife on the lips.
Within a minute, Phillips was sharing the joy with the audience which included out-going AFL Commission head, Mike Fitzpatrick who - when he raised the toast to Phillips - remarked, rightly: "well, this is a new experience".
Phillips thanked the AFL for starting the AFL women's league three years earlier than originally planned.
Sealed with a kiss: Erin Phillips is congratulated by wife Tracy.
Photo: Pat ScalaShe spoke about the four-and-a-half-month-old twins that her American wife, Tracy, carried and has also breast-fed through this convention-smashing inaugural AFLW season.
"I'm just unbelievably honoured," she said.
Erin Phillips with the inaugural AFLW best and fairest medal.
Photo: Pat ScalaThese were the first words Phillips said after having a medal – the as-yet-unnamed highest individual AFL accolade for a female player - put around her neck.
Phillips polled three votes in each of the Crows' first two games in the AFLW – best afield against Greater Western Sydney and the Western Bulldogs, well before anyone knew she would go on to be best on ground in last Saturday's landmark grand final.
"As soon as I was born I wanted to play footy. My poor father, I never let him sit down," the hard-bodied, deftly-skilled athlete reflected.
Phillips's father is Greg Phillips, a South Australian football champion who now, with wife Julie, is helping Erin and her wife, Tracy, with their twins, Brooklyn and Blake.
Erin and Tracy – married in America – have recently moved back into the Phillips' family nest for the extra support as one of the twins' mum has dominated the first AFLW season in the first AFLW premiership side.
"Every bit of this is owed to you," 31-year-old Phillips said to her wife on the stage.
"I love you and thank you so much."
What has playing AFLW meant to Phillips, who played basketball for Australia at the Beijing Olympics and, in a fortnight, returns to America with brood to play in the WNBA for Dallas?
"It has meant everything," she said.
"I was 13 years old and I was told I wasn't allowed to play footy any more with the boys. So to have this 17 years later; it's alright."
She was so much better than alright. She helped light the AFLW up.
Samantha Lane joined The Age in 2005 and has specialised in the coverage of Australian Rules football, cycling, Olympic sports and drugs in sport. A Quill award winner and part of the Fairfax team that won a Walkley award in 2014 for its coverage of the AFL’s doping scandal, Sam has rich multimedia experience. She is part of the Seven network’s Saturday night AFL television coverage and was previously a panellist on network Ten's Before the Game. Sam was The Age’s Olympics reporter for the 2012 London Olympics, and covered the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games, 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games for Fairfax. Her work has won awards from the Australian Sports Commission, the Victorian Institute of Sport, the AFL Players Association and the AFL Coaches Association.
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