FOR Bendigo Pioneers\u2019 Jordyn Jolliffe, it has been a rocky road to success with plenty of bumps along the way. Halted in her Aussie rules tracks as an 11-year-old, Jolliffe made the switch to netball before finding her way back to the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started in Auskick, wasn’t really a fan of netball and most of my friends were boys,” Jolliffe said. So I started there, played until Under 11s and then I wasn’t allowed to play anymore so I went over to netball,\u201d \u201cThen I found out that there was a girl’s league in Swan Hill starting up close to home so jumped on board with that and started playing again. Then I got picked into the Bendigo Pioneers and it sort of escalated from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
While being told she could not play was a big blow, nothing could prepare Jolliffe for injury in 2018, forcing her to sit on the sidelines for the entire season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a stress fracture in my lower-back so I missed last year unfortunately,\u201d Jolliffe said. \u201cI wasn’t allowed to do anything, because with a stress fracture you’ve got to let it mend itself. “So I sat out for the year and missed pre-season and then at the start of the year I had to just do my own programs to try and build my fitness back before the (NAB League) season started and I got to go into the Bendigo Pioneers as an over-ager.\u201d<\/p>\n
With fitness something Jolliffe wanted to work on coming into 2019, she said her strengths were “probably overhead marking and my kick”.<\/p>\n
Injury may have thrown a spanner in the works, but Jolliffe did everything in her power to bounce back despite missing pre-season. She certainly reaped the reward, earning a call-up to the Eastern Allies for the 2019 AFL Women\u2019s Championships.<\/p>\n
“It was very hard because obviously all the others did pre-season and to get back into it behind a bit, but that’s then just more work you have to do behind the scenes,\u201d she said. \u201cAfter the first two games it was a lot better, like game fitness, you probably can’t really train for game fitness. So the first game I struggled a little bit and then after that it was good to be back.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an awesome opportunity. I never thought I would actually get to play this carnival again after the injury but yeah, just overwhelmed with (getting) picked back into it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The New South Wales native from Balranald played NAB League in her junior years with Bendigo Pioneers but nominated NSW\/ACT in the women\u2019s national draft.<\/p>\n
\u201c(It was) a lot of travelling for me,” Jolliffe said. When I played for Bendigo that was three hours away from home and if you played in Melbourne that’s another four and a half, so always travelling, training and everything, it’s always a long distance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like many, Jolliffe hopes to make it to the big stage of AFL Women\u2019s, citing Erin Phillips as one of her influences.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve always loved Joel Selwood or Gary Ablett,” she said. But for the women, Erin Phillips. I just think I would love to be like her. “Yeah, try and make the AFL Women\u2019s, that’d be a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FOR Bendigo Pioneers\u2019 Jordyn Jolliffe, it has been a rocky road to success with plenty of bumps along the way. Halted in her Aussie rules tracks as an 11-year-old, Jolliffe made the switch to netball before finding her way back to the sport. \u201cI started in Auskick, wasn’t really a fan of netball and most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":59697,"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":[5603,11586,18213,278,11618,7950,8,3129,137],"tags":[39,10120,3669,10119,10118,9539,11627],"class_list":["post-59667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aflw-national-championships","category-bendigo-pioneers","category-bendigo-pioneers-girls","category-feature-articles","category-gws-giants-academy","category-nab-league-girls","category-news","category-nsw-act","category-womens","tag-bendigo-pioneers","tag-jordan-jolliffe-feature","tag-jordyn-jolliffe","tag-jordyn-jolliffe-aflw-u18-features","tag-jordyn-jolliffe-bendigo-pioneers","tag-nab-league-girls-features","tag-nsw-act-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59667","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\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90858,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59667\/revisions\/90858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}