Erin McKinnon is a young girl playing in one of the more demanding AFL positions, ruck, for the GWS Giants AFLW team. Last year Erin completed HSC, last week won a Rising Star nomination and this week played a key role in the GWS Giants AFLW team’s first ever win over the highly fancied Melbourne Demons team. Erin is highly motivated and her story of starting on her AFL journey is worth listening to. Continue reading
Brent Trewin is a trainer with the GWS Giants Women’s AFL team and he chatted to me for the short AFL segment we broadcast on Alive 90.5 (26/Feb/17) as part of their Sunday Sports Roundup show.
It was very interesting to get an albeit brief look at the role of trainers in the AFL and in particular getting an insight in to how much teams use the GPS technology in the player management during the match as well as post-match.
For over 40 years the Baulkham Hills AFL Club, better known locally as “Baulko”, has long been one of the prominent junior AFL clubs in Sydney. The East Coast Eagles AFL senior club is an offshoot of this feeder club. Now it is fostering the new driving force in AFL, girls footy. The advent of the AFLW competition is giving added impetus to the growth of girls footy and Baulko is stepping up to this new challenge.
Prior to the GWS Giants vs Fremantle AFLW game on Saturday at Blacktown International Sports Park, Baulko and a number of other local clubs joined the AFL and the GWS Giants in conducting a pre-match footy clinic which attracted a number of young girls to take up the AFL game. I took this opportunity to catch up with Kirsten Groll, Kylie Stanmore and Damien Phillips from the Baulko Girls crew after the footy clinic.
While at the game I also had a chance to catch up with Greg Talbot from AFL NSW to get some details on the Cumberland Cup event next Tuesday. This event is a pre-season event run each year by the Parramatta Lions and Greystanes Goannas AFL clubs. Greg has co-opted me to host their “Family Feud” segment as part of this event. See the pdf below for details.
The afternoon was capped off for Molly and I by witnessing the first ever draw in the AFLW in the game between the GWS Giants and Fremantle. What a game!!!
In many of my chats we always spend some time talking about the person’s day job but with Fiona Boyes, music is her day job. Fiona has been a professional musician for over 25 years and during that period has won many awards and distinctions. Indeed at the time of recording this Fiona had two nominations coming up in the in the American Blues Music Awards for her latest album “Professin’ The Blues”; one for best acoustic album of the year in America and one for Fiona personally as Acoustic Artist of the year. Continue reading
Molly and I had the good fortune to attend a “Meet & Greet” function this week put on by the GWS Giants to meet the Women’s team. From this, we were lucky enough to secure this interview with the captain of the team, Amanda Farrugia, later in the week. An abbreviated version of this went to air on Alive 90.5FM on Sunday 12th February 2017.
We discussed:
This is our first AFL podcast for 2017 and it celebrates the first round of the new AFL Women’s competition, called “AFLW” for obvious reasons. An abbreviated version of this went to air on Alive 90.5FM on Sunday 5th February 2017.
I was joined for the first time on a podcast by my wife, Molly, and also by probably the most well-known women in Sydney AFL circles, Amna K-Hassan, who I have chatted to previously, listen here.
We discussed:
You met Stringy Bark last week, now hear the woman beside the man Molly CoddleCream herself (a.k.a. Cheryl Firth).
Molly takes us through her interesting life before Stringy which gets even more interesting after teaming up with Stringy. Molly’s influence is noticeable in the music Stringy is making these days and this chat gives us a lot of insight into how that comes about.
Following on from Eric K. Betts last week, Amna Karra-Hassan is another “K” person, quite often being referred to as simply Amna K-Hassan. I first spoke with Amna back in April 2016 as part of the AFL segment on Alive 90.5. Amna’s team, the Auburn Giants, were just entering their first season in Premiership division in the Sydney Women’s AFL competition. Amna was the driving force behind the formation of this all women club which has a diverse range of ethnicities amongst its members, including Muslim girls.
Amna was to her credit a finalist in the NSW Local Hero section of the Australian Of The Year award this year. One of our listeners, Pip Cowan, has pointed out that Amna has also been named as one of 14 young women who owned 2016 by BuzzFeed, see the link below.
I was so impressed by Amna’s enthusiasm and positive attitude that I have been waiting for an opportunity to talk to her in depth and share some of this positivity with more people. So here it is, meet Amna, a force of nature.
“Get out of your comfort zone”
“Have a mentor, don’t just aimlessly wander and try to figure things out”
