A Peckham-based Aussie rules football team are determined to win the league in their captain’s last season for the club.
South East London Giants women’s team have reached back-to-back Grand Finals in the past two years in the Women’s Conference division of the AFL London League.
Captain Susie Carr, 33, is fairly confident the team will reach the Grand Final in her last season at the Giants before she moves to Australia.
She said: “Whether we can win or not, we’ll see. Third time lucky. I’m really, really gunning for it.”
AFL London teams largely consist of Aussie expats, meaning teams can change drastically with players coming and going each year from Australia.
Carr said: “A team can go from being super strong to not so strong year on year, just depending on who rocks up on your doorstep.
“I think before we were struggling to field a full team of 18.
“The last two seasons we’ve managed to get 20 to 25 every game, which has been great.
“We’ve got to back-to-back finals in the women’s conference, which has been awesome.”
Carr has represented England and Great Britain at international level, playing alongside five of her club teammates at the Transatlantic Cup in Canada last year where GB came third.
“I think 2019 was my first cap for England and then I played for Great Britain as well in a few different tournaments.
“I got to travel to different places around the world so that’s been an absolutely amazing experience.
“I think we have the most GB representatives of any club in London.”
Aussie rules football is played on an oval pitch with goalposts both ends that players kick an oval ball between to score.
Players are free to run with the ball as long as they bounce it every 15 metres, tackle each other, and even use their opponent as a stepping stone to jump up for high balls.
Women’s team coach Joe Arthur, 26, thinks the Giants have progressed immensely since struggling to field a full squad post-Covid.
He said: “I think there was about 11 women available to play that first week when I was coaching that first game.”
Aussie rules football requires 18 players on the field and six bench-players and the London league requires a number of non-Aussie players on the field.
Arthur says the women’s team now has a strong contingent of players competing at the top of the Conference league the past two years, including a high number of Brits.
He said: “We’ve had seven or eight English or British girls who were more or less brand new to the game go on and represent England and Great Britain at international tournaments.
“What’s funny is we actually have lost two very talented British players who have gone to Australia to play semi-professionally there.”
Arthur is coaching the women’s team for his fourth season and is also part of the men’s team who won the Grand Final, called a ‘flag’, last year to top the Men’s Social division.
The men’s team hope to mount a flag defence this season which Arthur says will be challenging but not impossible.
Both Giants women’s and men’s teams are currently undergoing pre-season training before the season starts end of April.
Images from Justin Ditton
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