AFLW Best & Fairest | Kate Roffey

everyone has told me not to eat those who are at the function the other night um told me don't eat anything before i stand up and speak tonight as you'll notice here i also have a little note which is very unusual they usually pretty much with me but i've got a really really really exciting and important announcement to make tonight we're not going to make it yet so can i just add my respects to the people on this land we're meeting tonight and in fact um any of our indigenous people who are in the room tonight particularly our players and people from any cultural background i've said it before it functions when i've spoken and i'll say it every time [Applause] i don't think in my time as president um as speaking either at the launch or the end of a season for our mental english program but in particular for our women's program those of you who know me in particular our coaches and our players uh with our afl program i don't know how much i absolutely love every minute i get to spend with our fabulous young women and our coaching staff because this program is a program that highlights every single thing we want every melbourne football club our women who play aflw and pull on the jumper for us are 100 professional they are dedicated to their sport and to this club they work outside of their aflw time and they manage still to make the commitment to come to training and to pull the jumper on every weekend during the afl season excellence is something i never ever will have to speak to this bunch of young women about it is naturally something that they come with and that they learn when they become part of the normal football club and they show continuously every single characteristic that we want every single melbourne football club person and i don't just mean players i'm talking about staff and talking about me i'm talking about my fellow directors and talking about supporters i'm talking about sponsors they display those characteristics both on and off the field and for that alone we should be incredibly proud of them not to mention the fact that they show everything that melbourne football club wants to be when they turn up on the field i think that alone deserves a huge round of applause [Applause] i said at the start of the season for the souvenir and i know a lot of you were there this is a fantastic gathering tonight it's small but the people in this room are the people who really do care and who really put in an enormous amount to support our aflw and i know i think that many women would be the first but i spoke at the start of the year and i said there is something special that happens and whether it's been our women's performance this year or our men's i've been getting us since i've been president what is it what's happening at the club what's going on here and i am actually a sports scientist my background so i'm a biomechanistic sports psychologist and you learn from the school science world that you guys have developed you know you're not good and you just can't do anything about it and you gradually move through phases where you become consciously incompetent where you know you can't do it but you know you should do it and then you become consciously competent i have to think about what i'm going to do but i can execute the skill and eventually when you get to the age of days or practicing and you've been playing for so long so then you get to unconscious competence and then you don't have to think about the skills anymore then you can start thinking about what's happening around you and as a club football club they're reaching that point where they're becoming unconsciously confident and that's the point at which you can start to think about entertainment you can think about what else is happening on the field you have to think about your own skill set you start to help the younger players who might be standing beside you in the backline and i know i've always chatting to the players and getting feedback and halfway through the year um goldie our irish back line i had to go out in the hamstring industry and vic came in and i know the players said to me it's me it's made such a difference and me of course that i haven't played that well i said right and the players around said that she's telling us what to do she's telling us where to go she's looking after the younger players in the background and that's what we've got now we've got a four of those players who know what to do and they're teaching younger players what they need to do and that's when you start to get a champion team on a team of champions and that's what we showed this year i know todd i'm not sure where he is because i've seen him but we were really concerned he spoke about the start of the year that we made a lot of changes at the start of the year to our listen it could have gone very badly but we had that core group there and that group believed that group of team players and they didn't let those big changes that we made at the start of the impact we made it almost almost to the top we almost got to the top of the mountain and we fell just short in adelaide and it was heartbreaking with the team um and i had the great honor of being able to speak to the players after the game and change rooms and i said absolutely be disappointed be upset because you have worked so hard the whole season both on and off the field during pre-season during the off-season you've worked so hard to get here afl governor premierships are not easy to win think that any person in this room or any person at this point is disappointed or that we're not proud of you because we absolutely are and i said there's two things all great people and all great athletes have as characteristic one of them is courage you have to have courage to put yourself out there to put yourself um in the lineup to push yourself beyond the boundary to set yourself up to get spoken about by everybody else but you go out there you need is resilience to bounce back every time you get knocked down and that's not just on the spoiling bill that's where you go i've been knocked down you've all been knocked down you know we've applied for jobs we haven't got them we kick goals you know that is going to happen but really quality people quality teams bounce back and that's what i know this team will do next year we're going to bounce back we might not win we still might not win the premiership adelaide is a good team you know it's plenty of good times for competition but if we keep bouncing back we keep getting up and we keep playing for each other that we will get there and i unfortunately couldn't tell the girls i kept asking bernie and i hopefully stole the girls and that way that i will be the next president of the club and i wasn't allowed to because he hadn't followed me announced it yet but i did say to the girls at that time i will stay here and support you until we win that flag because you deserve it not the club not all the other people sitting in the room but you deserve it for each other because of what you put in to pay so we're on the timeline now but it's coming you can feel that everyone can feel this energy and we'll come back to that with your support next year because our female players don't just need my support they need everyone's support i know i was struggling to to render well i've just spoken about the fact that we are one team and we're one club and everybody has a role to play and everyone's role is deeply important and nobody's role including mine is any more important than anyone else's we do need to actually acknowledge a few exceptional performances this year and the first issues [Music] was um almost in disbelief herself that she could win it and very much feeling like she's not deserved but he very much didn't deserve that there were 18 rising star nominations throughout the afw season and it was a very well deserved reward and of course we must also know that eliza mcnamara who also got a pick up a risers nomination so to have two players as well as nominee category is a important [Music] and guys you might not have gotten that rising star award but you most definitely win the award for hardest hit um because she absolutely got smacked during that actually laid and um although hers that she wanted to get up and come back onto the field but fortunately the concussion you know really i have to say that we should all stop expecting this because we sort of underestimate the performances because we expect them so often that um [Music] [Applause] this year and you'll also be aware there's only been five aflw seasons so putting two and two together she has made every australian team that we've had and the only other player of investment is from north melbourne so well done in there but she impacts [Music] we have a couple of um sad farewells that we do need to to make this year um lee mcavoy one of our um irish players one of our three irish continues she's already unfortunately gone um headed back home uh she's as you know i've just spoken to him to lauren i'm still later still here tonight it is really tough in ireland at the moment we just forget um we've got 85 000 people at the mcg and i spoke to lunch yesterday with a minister and they're 1.5 leaders a partner central center 60 000 people so you know there's no kind of social distancing but while we try to do the right thing it really has left our minds that it isn't even an issue here in australia but it is very much still an issue um in ireland i know the the irish contingent have given up a lot to come over and play when their families are struggling um overseas back just opened a cafe over there so she was quite keen to get back home and do that and unfortunately um at this stage but at this point in time she said she's not coming back next year move on to other things and of course all three of our contingent plays for the fabulous dublin daily football team side and um you know while we sort of don't know their names here apparently their faces are on buses and everything as they drive around so i'm really looking forward to getting over there play um in ireland in person someday soon chase sloane as uh i spoke to his behavior unfortunately has been cursed with the sloping tibia as we say in the biomechanics which is to a few acl injuries so shea is going to call it a day for her career probably won't you ever leave the shade but shane and i have both been volleyball as we share a coach and coach jenny becker shade a personal note for you as soon as she heard that shane was retiring sent me a message and said i think shane would be a fantastic coach um so i hope she's thinking of coaching and i just checked in with her outside and she said yeah that's an interesting old textbook mutual coach shay and um let you know that they don't know that kind of shame will be going on but thank you both um in her absence and shay for your contribution to this club and chase certainly i'm expecting on behalf of coach beggar to see you make a contribution going forward as well so i did say that i had one really really exciting announcement i mean i found out this morning and i was told like a kid in the candy shop i was able to announce this and i was so excited that i've barely been able to keep it out of the papers today but i've managed to do so i said to you when i was in adelaide i couldn't tell the girls that i was going to be named as the incoming president uh the next day but somehow it slipped out as it does and i got a phone call on the way home from the airport from a certain person who said i'm so happy and if you're going to stay i'm going to stay and i said okay that's a deal so i'm really overjoyed to say that our head coach nixon has signed up to the platform [Applause] of course the cheering and the loud closure here in the room is from the players um themselves one of the first things i was told when players found out i was going to be the incoming president to make sure nick stays he is highly sought after as a coach from the other club so we know that he's one of i'm not going to say one off he's the most respected uh and sought after coach in the afl he could easily go and coach afl but i'm very pleased with him football club thank you