AS the AFL Women’s season starts to wind down, clubs are starting to award their club best and fairest awards, recognising the stars of the season.

In this new series from Rookie Me Central, we take a look at the seasons of these club champions and what led them to have such stellar seasons.

Next up in the series, we take a look at the season of Melbourne captain Kate Hore.

Hore has ended another stellar season with her third straight Daisy Pearce Trophy.

She won the award on 70 votes, two votes ahead of her deputy Tyla Hanks. Breakout defender Maeve Chaplin had her break out year rewarded with a third place finish, while Eliza McNamara and Sinead Goldrick rounded out the top five.

The Melbourne skipper continues to be one of the Dees’ most important players, and from a humble start to her career has come a long way since debuting in 2018.

Hore has played most of her career as a forward, but this year presented a bit of a different role for her, one in which she still thrived. Although she did still play forward at times, she spent more of her time in the midfield, playing alongside the likes of Hanks and Liv Purcell.

Her strong body in the contest allows her to be a great extractor of the ball, which when then given to someone like a Hanks or a Chaplin running through, gives Melbourne a great boost out of the middle.

Although her averages per game of disposals, tackles and clearances all rose in 2024, the trade off for that was that her goal kicking numbers went down, kicking 12 less goals than she did in 2023. However, perhaps as a sign of how Melbourne’s season went, she still kicked the second highest number of goals for the Dees behind Alyssa Bannan.

It was not an easy season for Melbourne, with a long injury list full of key players really hampering their progress. However despite the adversity Hore really stood up, leading from the front and providing a shining beacon of light and hope to Dees fans and her team mates alike.

She may only be in her second year as captain and did not have an enviable task of taking over from a legend in Daisy Pearce, but she has not let it slow her down and she has used her elevation to captain to grow and become an even better player.