My Way

by Moana Hope

  12

  Welcome to the Magpies

  IHAVE LOVED THE Collingwood Football Club from the moment I first set foot in the place. The club felt like a huge family to me then and nothing has changed that feeling. The thing I love the most about Collingwood is that no one at the club has ever asked me to change. No one has asked me to cover my tattoos or try to make my hair look prettier. Quite the opposite, in fact. I knew the Collingwood people loved the way I look when they had my picture down the side of their website over summer, with my tattoos in full view. No matter what page you clicked, my picture remained there on the side, which made me so pleased.

  In the days after I was announced as one of Collingwood’s marquee players for the AFL Women’s league, everybody, from the staff to the board to the male players and the members of the Magpies’ new netball team, was so welcoming. Collingwood president Eddie McGuire was probably the most hospitable of them all. Eddie is a real cool dude. He’s really lovely. Eddie and I grew up a couple of hundred metres away from each other, so I get where he’s coming from. It’s the same sort of feeling I have with Susan Alberti. None of us got anything handed to us on a silver platter. Eddie is doing so many great things for women’s footy and netball, and seeing him in action at Collingwood’s Christmas lunch for the homeless was mind blowing, he’s just so great.

  To backtrack a little, I was scared when I first met Eddie. It was at a function to launch Collingwood’s women’s team and there were 600 people there. I’ll never forget the way Eddie put me at ease when he introduced himself. He just smiled and said, ‘Welcome to the club. We’re so happy to have you here.’ And I was like, Okay, this is amazing. He then took me aside for a chat. He was so keen to know a bit more about my story and the journey that had led me to the Magpies.

  After we had chatted for a while, Eddie said, ‘I’m going to get you up on stage.’ Once I was up in front of the crowd, he gave me a gift to welcome me to the club and started asking me questions. He made the whole thing a great deal of fun. He kept saying things like, ‘We love your tattoos. We just love your tatts. You’re the new Dane Swan!’ Eddie loved the fact that I had grown up in the northern suburbs, like him, and he kept pumping me up by saying, ‘You’re an amazing footballer, we love you, we’re excited to have you here.’ When I returned to my table, I had such a warm feeling inside. I kept thinking, You accept me for who I am.

  In the days after that function, I did a lot of media stuff. The staff who helped me with those appearances were so encouraging and accepting of me. They would say, ‘Mo, just go out there and be yourself’. Then, after I had finished the interviews, they would say, ‘Mo, awesome interview, loved it. Don’t you go changing the way you are.’ So many other people were similarly friendly. David Emerson, who is Collingwood’s director of operations, was brilliant. He’s basically in charge of just about everything at the club, and yet he had so much time for me. So, everyone at Collingwood supported me so much that it made me want to try even harder to be the best footballer I could be.

  The Magpies’ other marquee player, Emma King, and I became really good friends during those few weeks before the club drafted in the rest of its squad. Kingy is from Western Australia and would have been offered a spot on Fremantle’s list but decided she was keen to move across the country and sample the Victorian lifestyle. She is very tall and people always assume she has come to footy from basketball. But, as she is only too happy to admit, she can’t play basketball to save herself! She actually has a background in surf life saving, having grown up near the beach. I had played alongside Kingy for the Western Bulldogs on a couple of occasions, but we didn’t really hit it off until we arrived at Collingwood. Kingy’s take on how our friendship has developed is that:

  When I first met her, when we played for the Western Bulldogs together, Mo scared the shit out of me. I was intimidated by her tattoos and she seemed to have a big persona around the people she knew well. So I didn’t really talk to her the first time we played for the Dogs, then I got to know her when we played together the second time. I found out she’s like the nicest person you’ll ever meet. She’s so kind-hearted and wants everyone to succeed.

  I never had any doubts about her talent as a footy player. I mean, when she kicked those six goals for the Bulldogs it was a ridiculous performance. I have never seen another female play footy like her. She seems to know where the ball is going to go. During games, you find yourself thinking she’s out of position and won’t get the ball, but the next minute she’s kicked a goal and you’re like, wow.

  When I came over to Collingwood, I was a bit iffy on how we would get on because we hadn’t spent much time together before, yet we were going to have to do a lot of appearances together as marquee players. I sort of thought anything could happen, but we just hit it off straightaway. We have a very similar sense of humour, which helps. Neither of us take ourselves too seriously. We both love taking the piss out of each other.

  I think Mo is the kind of character that footy fans have been crying out for. She has such a great story and she’s so real, if you know what I mean. Everyone can relate to her. And she now has such belief in herself. She told me when I first came over and started doing media, ‘They want you to be yourself, so be yourself’. And that’s probably some of the best advice I’ve had. Mo makes sure she gives everyone that same advice: ‘Just be yourself, don’t try to be someone you’re not.’ That’s something that is making Mo a real leader in women’s footy.

  Kingy is very funny. When I was doing all that media about dabbing Gill and being a marquee player, she kept stirring me about how famous I was. She thought it was hilarious when we went out to a club one night and everyone kept coming up to me and asking for photos. Kingy jokes that I get mobbed everywhere I go:

  Everywhere we go, people are like, ‘Can I get a photo with you, Mo?’ I find myself just standing there watching it all unfold. I’m like Mo’s handbag. None of them ever know who I am, so I offer to take the photos. When I go home to Western Australia, I tell people how famous Mo is. They’re like, whatever. I say to them, ‘Honestly, she is so famous.’ It’s always funny when people fan-girl her and I’m like, ‘Hey, I hang out with her every day. She’s not that great!’

  Sometimes people ask me if I feel famous. But I don’t. Not at all. Although Vinny tells me every single day that I’m famous, which is so cute. In all seriousness, I never look at it like people are stopping me—they’re stopping the girl that plays football. Women’s football is the reason why I’m being recognised. For me, having come from a position where people always thought I was weird because I was a girl who wanted to play footy, it’s an incredible thing that people want to be seen with a female footballer. That’s the most exciting thing: people are noticing women’s football. That’s the biggest positive.

  Kingy and I spent a lot of time together in the months after we became Collingwood’s marquee players, as we had to attend a lot of functions and launches. One of them was the apparel launch for the AFL Women’s competition. All the apparel is being made by Cotton On, under its sports brand, COAR, and it is great stuff. The launch was held in a big warehouse in the Melbourne suburb of Kensington. We had to pose for a lot of photos, and some of the girls from the other clubs were really serious about it. They were so stiff that the photographers had to tell them to loosen up a bit. In contrast, Kingy and I mucked around so much that the photographers eventually said, ‘Can you just be sensible for a minute so we can take a normal photo?’ We tried to be as serious as we could be, but we just ended up looking goofy. We thought the whole thing was hilarious.

  The environment Kingy and I have walked into at Collingwood is remarkable. The club now has four sporting teams working out of the Holden Centre—the AFL men’s footy team, the AFL women’s footy team, the VFL footy team and the Super Netball team—and the players from each set-up get along really well. When you walk through the corridors of the Holden Centre, people go up to each other and say, ‘Oh, you’re a wom
en’s football player. That’s cool.’ I have met the most impressive array of athletes at the club, from star AFL footballers to star netballers—Collingwood’s Super Netball franchise has seven Australian Diamonds players in its squad—and I have learned something from all of them.

  I have been so impressed by the support that the male Collingwood players have given us. Particularly during our early weeks around the club, they were all really kind, although I would have to say that footballer Adam Treloar impressed me the most. He is such a gentleman. He’s a beautiful man and I hope one day he captains for Collingwood. After I kicked six goals for the Bulldogs in the last exhibition match, he sent me a message: ‘What a great game.You’re a legend. Can’t wait to see you in black and white.’ And I was like, Oh my God, there’s a Collingwood player messaging me.

  The Collingwood people are also so accepting of Vinny when I bring her along to functions or to the gym. I’m very protective of Vinny and I’m always very alert to the way people look at her and treat her. When we go shopping together, we often come across so many nasty people who point at her and laugh about the way she looks and call her retarded—I fucking hate that word. It’s like I’m walking along with an alien beside me, and it makes me so upset. But when I took Vinny to Collingwood the first time, everyone at the club was so happy to meet her. They accepted her for who she was not what she wasn’t, just like they accepted me from the start. I can’t describe how significant that is.

  We started our official pre-season training on 22 November, although I had done plenty of sessions in the gym before then. There had been some very exciting big-picture developments in the lead-up to us hitting the track, including an even better pay deal for the AFL Women’s players than had originally been promised. This is the press release that was sent out by the AFL on the day that the deal was announced:

  The AFL and AFL Players’ Association have reached an agreement on the remuneration package NAB AFL Women’s players will receive in the 2017 and 2018 seasons.

  In 2017, marquee players will receive a financial package of $27,000 (inclusive of $10,000 for their marketing and ambassadorial role), the priority players $12,000 and the remaining listed players $8,500 for the seven match (plus Grand Final) season.

  The packages will increase to $27,946, $12,846 and $9,276 respectively in 2018.

  The AFL Commission recently approved an increase to the initial remuneration package offered to all players to contribute to the cost of the required level of private health insurance, as well as further raising the base level payment.

  In addition to the package, the NAB AFL Women’s players will receive:

  • Football boots and runners

  • Travel allowance when playing interstate

  • Income protection insurance

  • Coverage for out-of-pocket medical expenses for the 52 weeks post contract

  • An allowance to pay for a carer when travelling interstate in cases where a player has a child under 12 months.

  I was always pretty happy with the AFL’s original pay offer. But I’m not complaining about the fact they’ve improved it. A lot of the credit for the increase needs to go to the AFL Players’ Association. Even before the draft was held to distribute the talent for the women’s league, the AFLPA worked really hard to get all the best female players in Australia on the same page. The people from the AFLPA were clear that we needed to be really strong when we negotiated our first pay deal, otherwise the AFL would walk all over us forever. The AFLPA made sure they had all the marquee players on board first, then we were able to spread the word to get the rest of the players to sign up. We would tell the players at our clubs, ‘Pay attention to what they’re saying, because they’re doing it for the betterment of everyone in the league.’ We were able to get the result we were after.

  What I know is that once the AFL Women’s competition becomes more popular, the pay for the players involved will improve. I’m confident that in time we will get to the position of strength that Australia’s best female cricketers now find themselves in. They struck a new pay deal with Cricket Australia in April 2016 that means players who represent the Southern Stars (our women’s national team) on a consistent basis and play in the women’s Big Bash League will be able to earn more than $100,000 a year.

  For me, playing sport has never been about money. It has been about doing something that I love. Even now, when I am able to earn money through playing footy, it’s not about making myself rich. I just want to help my family, especially my mum.

  The first pre-season with Collingwood, under senior coach Wayne Siekman, we started off with a serious workload. The whole training program was tailored around the fact that most of women in the squad were working full-time, so we trained in the evenings, with most sessions starting around 6.30 pm and lasting for a couple of hours—every player in the AFL Women’s competition is contracted to spend nine hours per week at their club. A few weeks in, however, the coaches sat us down in groups and asked us for feedback on how we were going. The consistent feedback was that all the girls were exhausted. Most of us weren’t eating enough because we were so busy with work and all the other things we do outside of footy. In my case, I am, of course, up every day at 3 or 4 am to start work. I have to sort out where I need to send my people, and then make sure they are all on the road before the peak-hour traffic starts to build. Then I get Vinny ready and take her to the place she is looked after during the day. For the rest of the day I find myself juggling traffic management issues and requests to do stuff for Collingwood or the AFL. By the time I get to training, I am usually hungry and tired.

  I’m certainly not the only player on Collingwood’s list who leads a very hectic life. It’s an issue for most of us. As a result, we would come to training and try to get up and about, but it was really hard because we were so tired. The coaches were fantastic. They listened to all our concerns and made a number of changes to our program. The club came to the party by putting on dinner for all of us after every training session. I hug the coaches every mealtime—free food is the way to my heart! I have so much going on in my life that I never have enough time to eat properly, and I’m sure a lot of the other girls are in the same boat. I’m just so busy that I forget to eat, which is the worst thing for my body, and something I’m trying to change. Having the club organising those three meals a week is so nice, because they are three meals a week that I might not have eaten. So that’s why I’ve got so much respect for the club and our coaches, because they really went above and beyond to listen and then look after all us girls.

  I actually had to do a lot of cross-training work in late November and early December because I was experiencing pain in my lower back. But the Collingwood physios got on top of the condition in the end, and I was able to join in some of the footy drills with my teammates prior to Christmas. Funnily enough, the milestone was overshadowed by all the stuff happening off the field.

  First, one of Collingwood’s major sponsors, Holden, gave me a brand-new car, an electric blue Holden Trax. The deal with the car is that I get it for free while I am a contracted player at Collingwood. When my manager, James Pitcher, told me I was getting the car I was overwhelmed. I had never had a new car before, so I felt so elated when they handed it over to me. I drove it straight to Mum’s house and everyone who was there at the time came out and looked at it. I don’t think any of them had been near a new car before. They were all saying, ‘Let me take it for a drive,’ but I was like, ‘It’s a brand-new car, you’re not driving it.’ I feel quite special to have received it. In fact, I’m beyond grateful. They could have given me a car from 1942 and I still would have driven it because it gets you from A to B. But it’s a brand spanker, and being an SUV it’s so nice and big. Vinny loves it because there’s more legroom in the back compared with the cars I have had in the past.

  Not long after I received my new car, I was featured in a Herald Sun story by Eliza Sewell, which really pumped my tyres up:

  Moana H
ope is one of the hottest properties in football.

  With an autobiography due out next year and talk of a kids book series too, the rise and rise of the heavily tattooed girl from Glenroy continues.

  Certainly when the Collingwood forward’s new blue Holden rolled into her street, the reality of a new life hit home.

  ‘This is how my family is when someone gets a new car (doesn’t happen often or ever so we soak up them moments side by side),’ Hope posted on Instagram with a photo of her siblings eyeing off her new wheels.

  The marquee Magpie hasn’t played a game in black and white but after opening up on ABC’s Australian Story in August and then kicking six goals in the AFL’s exhibition game on September 3—the flame was lit.

  Hope is now the face of a mouthguard, hosts clinics, has ambassador roles (with Harness Racing Victoria and charity Melbourne City Mission) and is in heavy demand for appearances.

  Next year we’ll see her on a women’s footy TV show and hear her on Gold FM.

  But it’s her Nike sponsorship, complete with electric blue boots carrying her number (No. 23, of course) and name, that shows how far the 28-year-old has come.

  ‘She didn’t have the luxury of being able to buy Nike when she was a kid,’ manager James Pitcher told the Herald Sun.

  ‘They used to buy stuff … like sweat bands and draw the swooshes on.’