Ash Brazill’s injuries, salary sacrifice and agonising AFLW call in pursuit of the gold dress

It was Money, Money, Money.

The much-loved midcourter and leader must have chased the dollars, the theory went in 2017. Headed back east for the cash. That had to be it.

The truth? NSW-raised Brazill, who had agonised over the decision for months, could have earned triple the amount by staying at a club she loved, in a city where she was settled and happy, had met her wife, made a great life.

What she describes as “probably the stupidest financial decision” the couple has ever made clearly wasn’t about the bucks. It was about the Diamonds. Representing her country.

The five-year-old who would stand on her bed pretending she was an Olympic or Commonwealth Games gold medallist and hand over her autograph to the row of teddy bears and dolls was, all those years later, an Ash Brazill still unfulfilled.

After many crushing — often baffling — Australian selection disappointments, she had been told by then national coach Lisa Alexander that she needed to change her game. Brazill knew that would also require a shift in environment, out of her comfort zone.

So she chose the all-star Magpies because foundation coach Kristy Keppich-Birrell had told her not just what she wanted to hear, but what she needed to know.

“The whole reason I left Fever was to get into this Diamonds team, so it was hard when I did play for Collingwood and had two or three good years and thinking that was going to be enough,’’ Brazill recalls, only for it not to be. “But it’s not about getting to the finishing line first, it’s about impressing the people you need to impress.’’

This month, the pursuit of that same international dream prompted another big and difficult call; the freakishly talented dual sport athlete reluctantly pressing pause on the AFLW career in which she earned All Australian honours and a club best-and-fairest before wrecking her knee against Melbourne in 2020.

Brazill will instead chase a spot in the Diamonds’ dozen for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games with a complete focus on netball, less risk of injury, and no competing interests in seasons that will overlap for the first time.

Telling the Pies’ footy coach/father figure Steve Symonds was the hardest part, but, afterwards, walking in the front door of the Melbourne home she shares with Brooke and the couple’s two young children — toddler Louis and newborn Frankie — was to be told she already looked lighter, for a weight had been lifted.

“It’s tough, because I just love footy. I feel like I’m probably more natural at football than I am at netball, and it feels like where I belong,’’ Brazill says. “But when I thought about my career and what I’ve worked really hard for, in the end it kinda just happened and it made sense why I was choosing to concentrate on netball this year.

“We had heaps of discussions at the club, and everyone kind of had their own agenda. Netball was saying they don’t want me to play footy and footy was saying, ‘well, Ash can do it, we know she can’ … With netball, it wasn’t straight out, ‘We don’t want you to play footy’, but it was, ‘Is it wise, Ash?’ And the fact that I did my knee in a footy game probably didn’t help the situation, either.’’

The irony is that playing football after her last and most painful Diamonds’ non-selection had not just reinvigorated her netball career, but saved it. Having lost the joy, Brazill believes she would have retired from her original sport several years ago.

When the 32-year-old eventually does hang up her bib, the idea is to pursue AFLW exclusively, and find out what it means to be running onto the field while not in the midst of a demanding pre-season program on the court.

So. A hypothetical. What if Australian Rules was also a Commonwealth Games sport and she could take her pick in Birmingham?

“I’m glad it’s not, because I wouldn’t be able to make that call!’’ she admits with a laugh. “And that’s the hard thing: I’ve been part of the All Australian team for footy, but you just don’t play anywhere.

“I was so excited to make that squad and it’s such an honour, but it would be great actually being able to represent your country against another country, because it’s just a feeling that you don’t get [otherwise].’’

Last month, Brazill felt it properly, adding four Test caps during an outstanding Quad Series in England to her eight from the previous seven years. She had worn the gold dress in the UK before, but as a late and brief replacement for the pregnant Renae Ingles in early 2016, so never felt the spot was her own.

“Singing the anthem in front of the English crowd is the best feeling, because no one knows it and you’re all pumping out the song. It was a very special moment and I guess that’s stuff that all the Diamonds always talk about, but until you’ve experienced it you don’t really get it. Very, very special.’’

Still, as for suggestions that Brazill has already booked her place in the Comm Games 12, with a squad announcement due – unusually early – after round four of Super Netball, few know better that nothing is guaranteed.

Brazill has lived it. Always took the high road, publicly. In private, there were tears.

*****

It’s a large club, the can’t-understand-why-it-took-Braz-so-long-to-get-picked group. While her Magpies’ coach Nicole Richardson admits to being a member, she also insists she is speaking in her Collingwood capacity rather than her other, more recent, role as assistant to Stacey Marinkovich at the Diamonds.

A head scratcher? “Oh look…’’ Richardson starts, stops, then continues. “Being Brazzy’s club coach, ah, yes! She’s the heart and soul of our team and I think what makes Brazzy so special is she can be a match-winner on court.

“At the end of the day the coach and selectors go with their gut feeling, but for me at Collingwood she’d be the first person I’d have in my team, because of her capacity to win games for you.”

It’s tight at the top of international netball. The last two major championships have been decided by one goal. Australia, still ranked No.1, did not win either. Shutdown players are needed, too, and Brazill has improved her capacity in that regard, but sometimes it takes just one intercept to change a game.

One moment of gravity-defying Braz Magic.

There are many factors in team dynamics, of course, including Richardson’s belief that no squad can afford to carry two specialist wing defences. After long-time incumbent Ingles came Firebird Gabi Simpson, another brilliant athlete.

Perhaps the turning point came in the last four rounds of 2019, when Brazill was shifted into centre to replace a struggling (now resurgent) Kim Ravaillion and blitzed it in Collingwood’s dramatic late charge into the finals, confirming herself as more than a one-position gal.

Soon afterwards, she had left her phone in the car while paying for petrol and returned to find a missed call from Alexander. When a pessimistic yet curious Brazill phoned back, she was stunned to be told she’d been chosen for the annual Constellation Cup series against the rival Silver Ferns.

Um, what? Are you sure this isn’t a mistake?

The question she might have asked, but didn’t: why now?

“I feel bad saying this but it was ‘finally, you had to say yes’,’’ she says of Alexander and her co-selectors. “And (the spot) was mine, rather than, ‘Oh, hey, Ash, someone’s injured or pregnant and now you’re in’.

“I just think everything happens for a reason – what those reasons are I’m still yet to figure out. But any moment now! It just feels right. It’s exciting. It just makes the journey worth it.’’

Earlier that year, having been snubbed for the previous three, she had toyed with the idea of signing a form declaring herself unavailable for selection so she could be spared the annual let-down. Protect herself from more disappointment.

“So grateful I didn’t. I think it was Nat Medhurst who told me not to. She was like, ‘Don’t be an idiot, make them not pick you and make them be accountable’.

“Then playing in 2019 and doing my knee after that I was like, ‘I’ve done it, I’m happy, I’ve done it with Diamonds’, but then you get another opportunity, you put the dress back on and you’re like, ‘Nuh, I’m not done here’. I’m constantly changing my mind.

“Richo’s been freaking out that I’d be upset about footy already, but I’m still in a good place about it. If they win the premiership I’ll probably be gutted, but I’ll be happy for them.’’

A remarkable former dual code star herself, having won Commonwealth Games netball gold in 2002 and Olympic softball bronze in 1996, Richardson has been a strong supporter of the last remaining foundation Magpie combining two sports, at once, at the highest level.

“It is absolutely a rare thing, but Brazzy is just an incredibly gifted freak of an athlete,” Richardson says. “There’s not many of her around and where we can we try to maximise her opportunities across both sports, because of just how good an athlete she is.

“I think deep down she probably knew what she needed to do, but because she’s got such a love of AFL and particularly the Collingwood program, it was a really, really tough decision for her. I think she was hoping someone else would make it for her to be honest with you! For me, I just wasn’t sure how she was going to be able to manage it.’’

In a four-year cycle, these are the big two, Birmingham in July and a Cape Town World Cup in 2023. Richardson acknowledges her midcourt gun could get injured walking down the street. Or on the netball court. “But an AFLW program just increased that risk and at the end of the day it was probably a risk too big for Brazzy to be able to take.’’

*****

When 30-year-old Brazill ruptured her ACL in a sickening instant against Melbourne on February 28, 2020, she also tore her lateral meniscus and damaged her medial collateral ligament. And broke her tibia. It was ugly. Devastating.

“Everything you could do, I did,’’ she says. “And I always said, ‘If I ever do my knee, I’ll probably retire’. But it just shows I wasn’t ready, because there was not one bit of me that thought ‘this is it’.’’

Plenty of others did, but not surgeon Julian Feller. When Brazill asked whether she had a better chance of coming back as a footballer or a netballer, he said she could continue as both. She had just logged one of her best games of footy. Produced some of her best-ever netball.

Not ready. No wonder.

Later on that same fateful weekend, the native of bushfire-ravaged Bargo was due to front for the Diamonds in a charity fundraiser – Alexander’s last match as coach after nine years. Brutal timing all round considering a challenging Covid-rehab in which Brazill was unable to see a physiotherapist for seven months.

The upside was spending that precious first year at home with baby Louis. She missed the early 2021 trip across the Tasman when international competition resumed, before making a solid return for the Magpies and earning a recall for the first Quad Series under newly-installed Marinkovich, her former Fever coach.

A right knee clean-out was needed first, and Brazill, while carefully managed, pushed to get back ahead of the usual 12-week recovery time. Give up her spot after all this? Not a chance.

“If it wasn’t Diamonds I probably just would have waited it out. I think I was on court two weeks prior to going away, I’d only been doing leg weights for three weeks, so it was definitely a challenge. It definitely made me question my body, but it was nice that I could actually play.’’

Better than just play. Brazill was understandably “stoked” with her own Quad Series form, and equally thrilled with the team’s in winning three matches and drawing one to retain the title. The culture and positive vibe among the Diamonds group ranks as the best she has experienced, amounting to all she had wanted for so long becoming everything she had expected, and more.

Her knee was sore after the long flight home from London, given she would not typically have played on consecutive days at this stage of her recovery, yet made it through the majority of minutes of four in five days. Almost too much Diamonds’ duty? The long-rejected Brazill never imagined that could be a thing.

“No, not at all! And I think that’s why I probably pushed it. I think any athlete would, playing for Australia, but the fact it’s been so hard to actually get a gig for the Diamonds, you just don’t take it for granted. You take any opportunity you can.’’

Having to shelve her rehab weights program was not ideal, necessitating a six-week power block on her legs that would usually be done at the start of pre-season, not half-way through. As an earlier-than-usual start approaches, round one against the Thunderbirds is scheduled for March 26 in Adelaide.

Richardson was not surprised last year when it took Brazill a handful of games post-comeback to find her feet, and while there were “glimpses of the old Braz’’ during 2021, she is confident better is to come. For club and, with the Commonwealth Games window open, perhaps (our words) even country.

This time four years ago, Brazill was vaguely hopeful, but never more than that, and thus not expecting to still be playing now. “When I didn’t make Comm Games or World Cup the previous years, I was like, ‘Nah that’s it, I’m done. Like, I don’t always wanna make it the years that don’t count, really’.

“I know every game counts, but they’re not the big two years that I wanna make, so I was shattered. I remember crying and just thinking, ‘I need to just stop worrying about Diamonds. Like, don’t even worry about me. I don’t even worry about me. I don’t even want the stress about getting told ‘you’re in, you’re out. I’M NOT IN’.

“So four years later, I’m here and putting my foot in the door and hoping that selectors pick me for Comm Games. But I don’t think you can ever be confident. Yeah, still a long way to go.’’

Not nearly as far as there was though, and if her beloved footy career may be temporary collateral damage, one senses golden Brazill’s five-year-old self handing out the autographs to her toys in her bedroom would approve.

“When I was struggling with this (AFLW) decision, Brooke brought that up, she said, ‘Remember? You’ve always wanted that, so why give it up when it’s right there?’’’ says Brazill, who could not be more grateful for the support and selflessness of her wife.

“Obviously I’m not in the team, but I’m so close. This is my last opportunity to play Comm Games, so I’m obviously gonna give it my all. Even with my brother, we used to play one-on-one basketball and we had the countdown and had to shoot the goal to win gold. Yeah, me and my brother are dreamers.

“But you talk to athletes and you kind of forget why you started the game and why you played it. How cool it was when you were kids and to think you met someone and got a signature, so I think that’s gonna stick with me all year.

“I’ve always wanted this, and if I don’t get it, and I’ve given up footy, then so be it. I just knew I had to figure out what my controllables were to make this team, and giving something up to give me a bit more energy throughout the year was probably one of them.

“But it’s not like a running race where the fastest player wins the gold medal. It’s all about if selectors like your game and think you’re the right fit, so hopefully I can please them, but you just never know. It’s tough. It makes me so nervous.’’

Understandably, given her history. So now it’s about playing well in — hopefully — a winning Magpies team, for the rewards tend to follow. Not always for Brazill, of course, but a ticket to Birmingham would almost make up for everything that has gone before.

Did someone mention tears?

“Everyone thinks I’m as tough as nails, but I’m such an emotional person,’’ she says. “Yeah, it would feel great, and just the sacrifices Brooke has had to make over these past six years, I feel like it’s not just my journey, but hers, and my parents’ as well, so it would be nice for all of us to get there.

“It’s weird to be talking like ‘what if you do get it‘, because you just don’t know and you don’t want to jinx yourself, but I think I’m old enough and ugly enough now to talk about that stuff.

“If you want it that bad, why not put it out to the universe?’’

Consider it out there. Why not, indeed.