Jimboomba Redbacks girls’ teams got some special inspiration ahead of their first round victories last week when Brisbane Lions player Jessica Wuetschner visited training.
Both the under 13s and under 15s sides scored first up wins on the weekend after being put through their paces by Wuetschner, whose Lions’ women’s side is currently unbeaten and will play in the inaugural AFL women’s grand final on Saturday.
The under 15s who went up a division this season to division one defeated Yeronga 55-17, while the under 13s overcame Calamvale 56-50 via a late Jayla Hargreaves goal.
Under 13s team manager Aurora Hodges said the girls now had a personal connection in Wuetschner to inspire them to greater heights with their football.
“That’s what we talked to them about, with both teams you have about half the team who love footy and they’re footy mad, and they watch footy and all of that, and then there’s other girls who are just there because they want to play, they’ve never watched a game of footy in their life, but now they have someone, an actual person and they’ve started to watch since they’ve met her,” she said.
Hodges was confident a number of the girls would be either glued to the television or watching Wuetschner play in person at the Gold Coast in Saturday’s grand final.
“The whole busload of them went to the first home game, all the Redbacks’ girls, we’re not doing a bus this time at Metri-Con (stadium) but we are encouraging them all to come to the grand final on Saturday,” she said.
Hodges was thrilled with the performance of both teams on the weekend after the inspirational visit which included some training drills with Wuetschner as well as advice on tactics from The Brisbane Lion..
“Yeah they did very well, the young girls’ team they were awesome, you know usually when the other team gets a goal close to the siren you think oh that’s it they’re going to lose, but they didn’t they brought it right back down and got another goal and that happened about three times,” she said.
Hodges said despite the growth of female AFL nationally and locally, the Redbacks club was focused on growing the game for both sexes and encouraged more boys to get involved.
“It is fantastic to see the girls playing, but we still want boys to play and get into the game, so if any local boys want to play aussie rules they should get in contact with the club,” she said.
“We currently have under 12s mixed teams and a masters team still, but we can get training happening for any boys who want to play.”