‘It was a massive risk’: How Adelaide Crows and home comforts revitalised Ash Woodland

Having originally been recruited as a free agent, the forward-turned-defender was lonely and homesick. Tired of a part-time existence as a footballer when, away from her family and partner, the rest of the time was not much fun at all.

Yet Woodland also believed that if she worked hard enough and played well enough, another opportunity would come. So she returned to her SANFL roots at North Adelaide, winning a premiership, the Roosters’ best and fairest and the league goalkicking award – the latter despite being reinvented as a midfielder and resting forward.

Having thus rediscovered her passion for the game and begun to build her engine, the now 22-year-old ended up via pick 47 in the 2020 national draft where she always wanted to be: playing with an Adelaide-based AFLW team.

The Crows.

With one round to play she is vying with Melbourne star Tayla Harris for the women’s equivalent of the Coleman Medal, her decision to return having been emphatically vindicated in her second season at West Lakes.

“I did go over to Melbourne quite young, I guess, had never lived out of home,’’ she recalls. “I think I was just so excited for the experience and to play AFLW that I totally forgot about what I was leaving behind, and my support system is my family, so I think I realised that when I was over there.

“I didn’t have my partner Adam, didn’t have my mum or dad just in the living room, I had to always call, so I think that’s what I struggled with the most … living in your room or going on walks on your own gets a bit old real quick.

“So I wanted to come home and come back to my SANFL club, North Adelaide, and see where that took me again. I knew I wanted to keep playing AFLW, but I just had to find the love again and hope the Crows or another team was willing to take me. Yeah, it was the right thing to do.’’

Woodland had other options, but no contract offer from the Demons; the four-gamer grateful for the opportunity but having already declared she was leaving before Melbourne had the chance to make their intentions known.

“It was a risk. A massive risk,’’ she admits. “I was potentially giving up something that I loved to do and wanted to do, but I knew it was going to be the best thing for my football and my career if I wanted to play good AFLW level football.

“I could have gone to a different club in a different state that year as well, but I turned down everything that I was offered to come home and play a level lower, just to find my feet again.

“I knew my day would come if I put myself out there on the field and if I worked hard, performed and did everything I could. And if that wasn’t good enough it wasn’t good enough, but if I did it on the field then, yeah, I would be noticed.’’

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The boys at Parafield Gardens High in Adelaide’s south-west were happy to let young Ash join them playing “marks up”. The issue was that they thought they were too rough to let her join the markers. Which left her at the other end kicking to the contests instead.

No problem with that, for it helped with her foot skills, while a decade or so in her teens playing in a largely boys-only social basketball team had helped to develop her hands. Nor did Woodland mind mixing it with the lads, physically. “I was really hard on the court and I loved it.’’

Woodland won multiple sports awards at school, and has always had the attitude that anything she played, she was capable of playing as a pro. “So once I started football and got into the state team and stuff, I knew I wanted to go higher. So just my resilience and my growth mindset is what’s got me to professional football.’’

She still loved basketball, though, and would attend Adelaide Lightning games to watch the superstar guard with “a little blonde bob haircut”. Name: Erin Phillips. Woodland followed her idol and fellow South Australian’s fortunes in the NBA and for the Opals, and now plays alongside the cross-code champion at the Crows.

“She’s a great leader on and off the field, Erin. Especially for the forward line and the mids, she helps us a lot as she’s in those line groups, but just as a professional athlete she’s got so much knowledge and she gives off everything she can to us to help us perform or be better. She’s been in the elite environment in basketball for a long time, so we’ve definitely learnt a lot from Erin.’’

Woodland was among the record crowd of 53,034 packed into Football Park for the 2019 grand final, when Phillips suffered her second ACL tear. The Crows fan was wishing she was out there, but genuinely thrilled for those who were on such a momentous day.

She was also preparing to sit out the 2020 AFLW season, and is now happy she did.

“Once I make a decision, that’s sort of it, and I knew what I was giving up,’’ Woodland says. “I never thought I was a bad footballer or anything; I just needed to get myself and my body right, and I wanted to work even harder down a level to make sure that AFLW was where I want to be at and where I deserve to be at.’’

And to be at her best if and when she got back there. “Yeah, I want to be a better player.’’

*****

It started in the pre-season, as these things so often do. Relieved, thrilled and excited to have been recruited by the Crows, she knew she needed to get fitter. Push herself to train harder. Run, as torturous as that can be, then run some more.

“Even before we drafted Ash, she’d sort of started on that path,’’ Crows AFLW head coach Matthew Clarke says. “Absolutely self-driven, and hopefully we’re helping her in terms of providing the resources and environment to make that easier, but in the end she’s doing all the work.

“Some players just hit that marker at different rates, and Ash has clearly had an enormous amount of talent, but just being able to get to more contests is allowing that to show through.’’

Woodland can laugh that she’d love to love running, like her teammate Anne Hatchard for example, but one thing she has always adored is kicking goals. An inaccurate haul of 9.10 from 2021 has improved to 17.5 this season with one round – against St Kilda – and finals remaining, regularly staying behind after the group sessions for additional practice with fellow forward Danielle Ponter.

She is settled now, content within what she says has always been a welcoming group. “Last year it was a bit nerve-racking coming to a new club, and you sort of sit on the sidelines; don’t really put yourself fully out there. This year I was more comfortable. I understood drills and I half knew what we were coming into, so I put my body on the line a bit more and I think I just pushed myself.’’

She is averaging a goal a game from her 24 so far in a traditionally low-scoring league, impressing Clarke with an improved workrate that hints at the flexibility to spend time in the midfield in the future, which would be the next progression for a player who has experience in key positions at both ends of the ground.

“It’s been a great season, obviously,’’ says Clarke, who played 258 games at four clubs and took over at the Crows in 2019. “Clearly, she’s hit the scoreboard, which is obviously great for the team.

“She’s just working really hard, her pressure’s really good, and she gets to lots of contests because she’s increased her aerobic capacity, her ability to stay in the fame for longer. So lots of things she’s been doing have been excellent for us.’’

A premiership, which would be the ladder-leading Crows’ third in the six AFLW seasons, would be the perfect reward, and if the goalkicking award she admits would be “unreal” would represent some individual icing, then it’s all about the cake. And sharing it with the team that gave her a second chance at AFLW.

“Tayla Harris is in the running for that award as well and she’s an amazing footballer,” Woodland says. “She’s also worked her butt off this year, so whoever wins it I think’s very deserving of it,’’

“It’s probably a hard award to win as goal kicking isn’t easy. But it’s just finishing off. Goalkicking is just finishing off the hard work your team’s done on the day.’’