WHEREVER one of\u00a0Madison Prespakis\u00a0<\/b>and\u00a0Nina Morrison <\/b>goes, the other seems to follow, with the duo backing up their AFL Women\u2019s Under 18 Championships Most Valuable Player (MVP) award by being crowned dual winners of the TAC Cup Girls Best and Fairest.<\/p>\n
Prespakis has long been touted as one of the best Under-18 female footballers while Morrison has had an outstanding 2018 season. This has allowed the duo to develop a strong friendship, despite being fierce competitors on the field. They played alongside in each other on a rare occasion in Adelaide on Friday night, and Prespakis admits that it would be nice to do it again. Although the Cannons captain was proud to take out the awards, she couldn\u2019t think of a better person to do it alongside than Morrison.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing off the winner of the carnival with Nina across Australia was obviously a very big honour and something you\u2019ve sort of got to wrap your head around,\u201d she said. \u201cThose little wins, you\u2019ve got to be proud of yourself at the end of the day and to do it with Nina, I couldn\u2019t think of another person more deserving of Nina. \u201cTo come in tonight and to take it out with Nina once again was a very big honour and hopefully in the future we can play alongside each other. \u201cI\u2019m just excited to see where Nina goes and I\u2019m very proud of the way she\u2019s gone about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is a chance that Morrison could end up in her hometown, Geelong, next year with the new expansion team coming into the AFL Women\u2019s competition. The Falcons premiership player is excited about this prospect.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s obviously really exciting that an expansion club is coming in,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a good opportunity for the AFLW to build and talent to expand so it\u2019ll be exciting if I get to play down there. \u201cI\u2019m just looking forward to playing next year and just see what happens but yeah, it\u2019ll be pretty exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prespakis on the other hand is still keeping her options open in terms of what AFL Women\u2019s club she will nominate for.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suppose obviously it plays on your mind a little bit when people ask you where you want to go and stuff,\u201d the Vic Metro representative said. \u201cI\u2019ve sort of kept it between me and my family and one of the ladies looking after me. \u201cObviously, nominations do open soon and that\u2019s when those conversations sort of come into play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morrison is honoured to not only have drawn comparisons with Prespakis, but to win some prestigious awards alongside her too.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaddy\u2019s obviously a very good player,\u201d she said. \u201cShe has been all year and years past as well so I guess to be compared to her is like a big honour. \u201cI really respect her as a player on the field and off the field, she\u2019s a great person as well. \u201cI\u2019m privileged to get these awards but I think it\u2019s just sort of an added bonus that comes with the team success.\u201d<\/p>\n
The talented duo have both tried their hand in the Victorian Football League (VFL) Women\u2019s competition this year and have enjoyed matching it up against some of the finest AFL Women\u2019s players. Prespakis noted the faster pace of the game compared to TAC Cup Girls, and experienced more running in a Melbourne University jumper compared to a Calder Cannons one.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, I played against NT in my first game and I thought they were amazing, they were so fit and I ran almost two k’s (kilometres) more than what I would run in a Youth Girls game so for me, the running and the speed of the game was really high,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
At the Cats, Morrison identified the increased physicality of the competition as the biggest difference compared to playing in the TAC Cup Girls competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think probably the biggest difference is probably the step up in physicality,\u201d the Falcons midfielder said. \u201cObviously, you\u2019ve got a lot of bigger bodies running around so it\u2019s always going to be a bit more physical so I think the skill level can correlate a little bit. \u201cThere\u2019s probably a bit more depth in the VFLW and you\u2019ve got some really quality AFLW players playing in there so it\u2019s a great opportunity to test yourself against that next level up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morrison has admired AFL Women\u2019s players such as\u00a0Daisy Pearce\u00a0<\/b>and\u00a0Emma Kearney\u00a0<\/b>while Prespakis has modelled her game around Kearney,\u00a0Ellie Blackburn\u00a0<\/b>and\u00a0Karen Paxman.\u00a0<\/b>These players have played a huge part in AFL Women\u2019s and Prespakis says the up and coming talent will continue to make the competition a hugely successful one.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re definitely players to watch but you know, upcoming players such as Nina is another one to watch so the future\u2019s looking bright for AFLW and it\u2019s only just getting better,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WHEREVER one of\u00a0Madison Prespakis\u00a0and\u00a0Nina Morrison goes, the other seems to follow, with the duo backing up their AFL Women\u2019s Under 18 Championships Most Valuable Player (MVP) award by being crowned dual winners of the TAC Cup Girls Best and Fairest. Prespakis has long been touted as one of the best Under-18 female footballers while Morrison […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":39599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5603,11587,18214,278,11590,7950,8,137],"tags":[5351,3014,3020,3022,3037,158,3326,138,6805],"class_list":["post-39727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aflw-national-championships","category-calder-cannons","category-calder-cannons-girls","category-feature-articles","category-geelong-falcons","category-nab-league-girls","category-news","category-womens","tag-afl-womens-under-18-championships","tag-daisy-pearce","tag-ellie-blackburn","tag-emma-kearney","tag-karen-paxman","tag-madison-prespakis","tag-nina-morrison","tag-tac-cup-girls","tag-tac-cup-girls-best-and-fairest"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87865,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39727\/revisions\/87865"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}