Charlie crowned golden champion again
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.
In this first article, we head up to the Gold Coast Suns and take a look at the season of young midfield star Charlie Rowbottom.
Rowbottom has capped off another star season by winning the Suns’ best and fairest for the second time in three seasons, after finishing runner up in the award last season.
She finished the count on 313 votes, which was 55 votes ahead of the joint runners up Niamh McLaughlin and Daisy D’Arcy. Meara Girvan finished in fourth, while Elise Barwick rounded out the top five of the count.
It was touted as an absolute coup at the time that the Suns were able to lure her to nominate for Queensland in the AFLW Draft instead of home state Victoria, and since then Rowbottom has risen to be arguably Gold Coast’s most important player despite only being 21 years old.
2024 was another record breaking year for Rowbottom.
She broke the record for the most clearances in an AFLW season with 84, and also lead the league for contested possessions. She also averaged a career high tally for both disposals and marks, and a personal best of 42 disposals in one game.
She has also made the All Australian squad for a third time, and will be looking to add a second All Australian blazer to the collection after making her maiden team last season.
Unfortunately for the Suns, all of Rowbottom’s growth has not translated to success on the field, and it may be down to personnel around her.
Last season Rowbottom had both Alison Drennan and Claudia Whitfort alongside her at the heart of the midfield, which took a lot of the pressure off her. Fast forward to this season and Drennan is on the other side of the country at the Eagles, while Whitfort missed a number of games this year due to injury.
This meant that Rowbottom had to shoulder a lot of the midfield responsibility and the one thing in football is that the fewer players there are doing the bulk of the heavy lifting to get success on the footy field, the less success that will be generated.
Charlie crowned golden champion again
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. […]
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