BRINGING a truckload of experience to Hisense Stadium, former AFL Women’s Tiger and Pie, Iilish Ross will be a much welcome addition to the reigning wooden spooners. Not much went right for the Bloods last season, with a number of unforeseen circumstances derailing the 2021 South Australian National Football League (SANFL) Women’s grand finalists’ season.

While the Bloods went on to win the wooden spoon – losing 11 games in a row after beating eventual premiers North Adelaide in the opening round – there is still much optimism surrounding the red and blacks, including a number of key inclusions. Adding some AFL Women’s experience, Ross is looking forward to falling back in love with the game.

“I spent a lot of time in my AFL career injured,” Ross said. “When my partner moved back home here in Adelaide we bought a house, and we’re just renovating that so it was more about life away from footy and footy’s now coming second. Just finding the love for it and have no expectations at all.”

Ross came up through the then-named TAC Cup with the Murray Bushrangers. She was drafted to Collingwood, and eventually made her way across to Punt Road where she took up an opportunity to play for Richmond in its inaugural AFL Women’s season. Unfortunately repeat injuries throughout her career limited the talented Ross to just 21 games across four seasons.

“It’s obviously pretty frustrating (the injuries),” Ross said. “Being out on the park I feel like I can really contribute, and it was never anything apart from injuries that pretty much stepped away from the footy.

“Richmond were great to me, they supported me in every way, we probably didn’t want to let that partnership go but we did and they’re still really supportive of me, and I’m sure we could still reconnect if we needed to on a VFL level or anything if I really wanted to pursue footy again, but just frustrating.”

Ross is looking forward to bringing her physicality and smarts to the table for the youngest team in the SANFL Women’s, while also eyeing off a new role further afield.

“I would say my strengths would be reading the play and my physicality on one-on-ones,” Ross said. “I always played that lockdown, selfless role in AFL but pretty keen to have a bit of fun and maybe play a bit of midfield, learn that craft. I’m pretty super excited about that opportunity but if the team needs me to go back and defend then I’ll obviously do that. Skill execution is the biggest thing that I need to work on.”

Coming down to training, Ross did not realise just how young her teammates would be. Being one of the most vocal at training, Ross recalled one instant where she encouraged a teammate to go harder, only to be told they were only 16. She provided words of encouragement but quickly realised she would be one of the oldest in the team. The 23-year-old said it was about doing the “one percenters” right and setting the culture that the club wanted to drive to be better.

“If we walk into a drill it’s ‘nah girls let’s go, let’s jog’,” Ross said. “It’s just those little things, the girls want to learn. We’ve got Lauren Young and Lucy Boyd and all of those young ones coming up who really want to do it and some are in the AFL Academy so they know the standards. There’s a few that we will drive each other together to be better.”

Being a young side, Ross said the first step was to develop the youth, and ensure high standards throughout the season. If the internal expectations were met, then the on-field results would take care of themselves.

“You speak to some of the youth and they probably haven’t been developed as well as they could have been, so it’s really exciting to keep developing our youth,” Ross said. “We want to play finals footy but we’re pretty realistic, just win more games and have a good culture. If we’re playing the way we want to play every week and even if we’re not getting the win, that will be a small win, but obviously wins are what we’re chasing.”