EAST Fremantle tall Anjelique Raison is an AFL Women’s draft hopeful for 2023, having forged a promising career over the last few seasons. Having represented not only her club at WAFL Women’s level, but also her state at national level, Raison is one to watch this year. Providing a special insight into her journey so far and looking ahead to 2023 where she is completing her last year of school and preparing for her top-age football season.

ANJELIQUE RAISON PLAYER DIARY:

In this first instalment I will give a bit of background to my journey and how I have arrived where I am today.

I started Auskick at the South Perth Stingrays when I was in grade 1 in 2011 with a couple of friends from school. Our team was a bit different because there weren’t many teams with any girls, let alone three in the same team! Unfortunately after a few years of Auskick and moving into older age groups I was the only girl in the team.

But one thing that was great for me was that I was lucky enough to have a great coach Dave Allan who didn’t care that I was a girl and just treated me like everyone else in the team. He never asked the boys to go easy on me, so I didn’t really feel weird about being the only girl. As I got a bit older and there weren’t really many pathways for girls footy at that stage, I stopped playing and took up basketball.

Although I was kind of a late starter to basketball, I found lots of similarities with footy so I picked up the game reasonably quickly and started to play at rep level in the WABL and was able to be selected in the Willetton Senior High School specialist basketball program.

The Willetton school program teaches you a lot of things about sport and life in general and has been a great help for me in terms of discipline, receiving feedback and training standards.  The success of the program speaks for itself, with people such as Ebony Antonio, Ruby Schleicher, Luke Jackson and Luke Travers having been part of it in previous years.

When the AFLW started and more all girls teams started forming, I started playing again at Rossmoyne because at that stage South Perth didn’t have a girls program up and running yet. After a couple of seasons Rossmoyne combined teams with Willetton JFC who have a really strong girls program and we managed to win the Year 7/8 premiership in 2019.

The following year I started playing for East Fremantle in the Rogers Cup WAFLW youth girls competition, but the season was shortened due to Covid and I had some clashes with my WABL commitments so only played a few games.

In 2021 I was lucky enough to be selected in the East Freo WAFLW league team, however we had a tough season and just missed out on making finals. But for me it was great experience being only 15 and getting to play with and against some of my AFLW heroes such as Roxy Roux, Phil Seth, Gabby O’Sullivan and Steph Cain.

In 2022, we had a new coach Matt Templeton, a new game plan and wanted redemption for missing finals the previous year. It was a bit weird for me because I had to miss a big chunk of games in the middle of the season due to playing for WA in the 18s national championships, plus I was coming off an injury which meant I missed all of preseason and was still being managed throughout the season.

As well as that, I was training/playing as a defender for the first time in the state team, but as a forward/ruck for East Freo which messed with my brain a bit! All of those factors meant it was hard for me to get much continuity until later in the season, but the girls were flying as East Freo went undefeated for the season leading into finals.

The semi-final was a grind in difficult conditions and not many goals were scored, but I managed to kick the one that put us into the grand final which I was a bit excited about (as you can see from the photo).  The win gave us the week off, which ended up being great for me as I went down with Covid a couple of days after the semi.

Although the lead up was nerve wracking, grand final day was so much fun.  The crowd was awesome, Claremont Oval was full, and it was a high quality game of footy. It was a close game and the lead changed several times, but unfortunately we couldn’t quite get over the line.

Even though we didn’t win, it was an awesome occasion to be involved with, a great advertisement for female footy and being able to kick a couple of goals and feel the crowd energy was a great thrill for me. I was fortunate enough to be awarded East Fremantle’s League Player of the Finals award which was a nice way finish the season, but want to win that flag in 2023.

Since the grand final, my footy off season has seen me head to Bendigo to play for WA in the School Sport Australia nationals and also to the Gold Coast to compete for Willetton SHS in the Australian Schools Championships (both for basketball).  Both were great experiences and I came back feeling happy that I can compete at that level. 

From there I had some down time to recover from what had been a hectic year and did my own S&C program until preseason started in November for WAFLW, NBL1 and the state 18s.

2023 is going to be a big year in lots of respects.  There’s obviously the draft on the horizon which I’m not really focusing on now, but know there will be noise about it as the year wears on.

I like the idea of relocating and experiencing living in a different place, so that may be a decision I need to make down the track depending on how the draft rules pan out. I don’t really have a specific state in mind yet, but will spend the year doing a bit of research to help me decide.

It has been a long preseason, but now we are only a week or so away from the scratch matches starting to crank up.  I generally need a scoreboard when I’m playing anything, so months of just training means I am well and truly ready to start playing some games!

I have been able to do all of preseason and have also been working on a few aspects of my game that I want to improve, so I am dead keen to get into it and start putting it into practice. Bring on 2023!