My Way

by Moana Hope

  The interest in his client is such that Pitcher is having about four meetings a week to discuss opportunities.

  My teammates—Kingy in particular—stirred me up a lot about the article. We have a fines system, whereby any player who appears in the media has to put a couple of dollars in a jar. After that article was published in the Herald Sun, Kingy said to me, ‘Mo, just put $50 in the jar at the start of each week!’ I think I’ll have to ask Eddie McGuire for access to his spare change drawer to meet the cost of all these fines.

  I am rapt that people like Emily Woods continue to follow my progress from afar. I was able to chat to Emily around Christmas time and it was awesome to hear how thrilled she is by the way that women’s footy is taking the world by storm. Emily has viewed my progress closely, and says:

  Watching Mo in those exhibition matches was just great, and then I watched the Australian Story episode and I thought it was a fantastic story, but it seemed to have put a lot of pressure on the last exhibition match. And then when she came out and kicked those six goals, it was amazing. I couldn’t help but think that she can clearly handle the pressure now.

  When I think back to her younger days, she obviously used to represent Victoria and all that sort of stuff, but she was never the standout player or the face of women’s footy or the one that you’d go to a footy game to watch. Daisy Pearce was that kind of player. But Mo is now someone who has all the attributes to be the face of the game. You don’t see many great full-forwards in the men’s game anymore, let alone full-forwards who can kick a hundred goals in a season, so she is a real drawcard. To see her kick a hundred goals for the St Kilda Sharks was amazing.

  Although I’m an Essendon supporter, I’m rapt that she has been recruited by Collingwood. She’s almost taken over Dane Swan’s role as the tattooed cult hero. I was in Melbourne over Christmas visiting the family and I opened up the Herald Sun and saw the full-page spread on her. I couldn’t help but be happy for her. Mo does so much for charities and for her sister and her family as a whole. She’s such a humble kid, but she’s an extraordinary person at the same time.

  My mate Nicole Graves is another great friend who continues to support me from afar:

  I’m so chuffed that Mo has become hot property. She deserves it, because she’s got a good heart and she is a fantastic story. I’m glad the media has jumped on someone who’s a bit off-centre and not the same boring, perfect type of person that dominates the footy coverage nowadays.

  The most important thing about the AFL Women’s competition is that we have so many different characters from such diverse backgrounds. It’s nice to see that women’s footy has become a game for everyone. You don’t have to be a university graduate or to have a perfect image to be accepted in the game. It’s a wonderful thing. Mo Hope and Daisy Pearce are both elite at what they can do on the footy field and they are both leaders in their own way, but they are completely different people. Yet both of them are being promoted as key members of the sport at the elite level.

  I also remain extremely close to Sue Alberti, and she continues to support me in more ways than one:

  Mo feels inadequate in many ways, given she hasn’t done a lot of schooling and probably doesn’t read and write as well as many people. But every time I speak to her I say, ‘Mo, don’t let that worry you.’ I didn’t have a tertiary education and I’ve managed. I’ve believed in myself, I’ve surrounded myself with people who are smarter than me, I’ve learned from them and gained knowledge from them. I’ve had lots of downs as well as ups, but I think I’m helping her believe in herself that she’s going to be okay. I think she knows I’ve accepted her and I’m not afraid to be out with her, to be seen with her, to be talking to her. We love one another. She’s like a daughter to me now. I really love her and I want to help her, if she wants me to. I want to mentor her and give her that confidence that she desperately needs.

  I love all the young women who play footy. They’re like my family. I don’t care who they play for. I just want them to be successful. You can overcome just about anything if you really put your mind to it. That’s the way I look at life. The bigger the challenge the harder I work. I’ve always had that philosophy. I’m not sure whether Mo has exactly the same attitude, but look what she’s achieved in the face of such adversity. She can help other young girls aspire to be the best, if they really want to. She will be able to leave a legacy that says to young girls, ‘If you have a dream, if you aspire to do something great, you can do it.’

  No matter what happens from here, I will never forget the people who helped me get to the AFL.

  13

  Across the ditch

  IHAD SOME TIME away from footy in the middle of pre-season when I travelled to New Zealand for the first time. I’m extremely proud of my Māori heritage, so it had long been an ambition of mine to go there. The reason for the trip was an emotional one: we went to see the unveiling of my grandfather’s tombstone. Despite her various health problems, Mum garnered the strength to come along, which was so important as it was her father who we were honouring. All of my thirteen brothers and sisters came as well, which meant it was like a big family reunion. It was the first time we had ever been overseas as a family. It was also the first holiday I had taken in three years, so I was really hanging out for it.

  The trip was incredibly important for Mum. She had waited so long to take her kids back home for the first time and to meet her huge extended family. The trip was also really important for me. It might turn out to be the first and last international trip I get to do with my mum, so it was something I wanted to cherish every day we were there.

  My siblings saved up their money for more than a year so they could come on the trip. They would give Mum fifty or a hundred bucks a week out of their pay. She put the money aside and when she had enough for the airfares, she booked them. Similarly, when there was enough money for the accommodation, she booked it.

  Because of everything that is going on in my life, with footy and media appearances and my new car and stuff like that, my brothers and sisters all think I’m rich. So they were trying to scam money out of me to pay for things on the trip. They were like, ‘Oh, I’m broke, please pay for this’ or, ‘Moana, please pay for my dinner.’ I had no problem telling them to get stuffed sometimes. But I wasn’t being nasty to them when I did that. Everyone in my family knows that I care deeply about them, and they all know that I am putting most of my money towards caring for Mum.

  Even if I become very successful in my life from here, and end up in a comfortable financial position, I will never be a person who just keeps it all for myself. Sharing my good fortune with my family is so important to me. I want my family to experience what I am experiencing. Even though I’m by no means rich right now, I helped everyone out where I could on the trip to New Zealand by shouting them a few dinners and things like that. The other thing I am perennially conscious of is never putting any of my siblings down. I never go around saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got money’ or, ‘I earn good money from work but you don’t’ or, ‘I support Mum and Vinny and you don’t, or think less of them. My family are my family and I will help them no matter what. Helping them also makes me feel close to Dad. I feel like I have got to a point in life where I can continue his role in terms of supporting the family. That might sound weird, but I feel like I can do what he would have done to support everyone if he were still here.

  I sometimes get asked if I feel a lot of pressure to support my family, or if I’m feeling like I am carrying my family around on my back. People ask if being the main breadwinner in such a big clan is stressful. Well, it can be, don’t worry about that. But, to me, your family are the most important people in your life. And no matter what happens in my life, with football or work or things like that, my family will always be there. Funnily enough, the pressure to get somewhere in life, to help my family, actually drives me. It makes me get out of bed each morning. In that way, it’s a good thing.

  In New Zealand we travell
ed to my mum’s hometown of Kaitaia, which is located near the top of the North Island. It is an area that is steeped in Māori history and still has a large Māori population. My grandfather, whose name was Joseph, had been a chief, so the service for the unveiling of his tombstone was very important in the local community. The tombstone unveiling is called Hura Kohatu in the Maori language and it is held around one year after the person has died. It is the last time that a family shares its sorrow in public.

  It was really amazing to experience the unveiling ceremony, and I found all the customs and traditions we had to adhere to very interesting. As we left the cemetery, for example, we had to wash our hands and sprinkle some water on ourselves so that we didn’t take any bad spirits away with us. We also got to experience a service in a marae, which is a Māori church. The marae that we visited was started by my great-great-grandparents and their pictures were on the wall.

  The people who run the marae were able to tell us about the customs that featured in my grandfather’s funeral. When someone passes away in this part of New Zealand, the family sleep in the marae beside the casket for three nights. People come and visit the casket to say goodbye to the person during the day. It’s all very different from what happens in most of Australia when people die.

  We had some very deep spiritual moments in New Zealand, but we also had a lot of fun. Being together as a family gave us the chance to muck around like we did when we were kids. Every morning we would knock on each other’s doors and yell out, ‘Get up, you lazy shit,’ or some kind of banter like that. We were always playing pranks on each other. We tried to get out and about and see the region around Kaitaia, and this created more amusement. One day we hired quad bikes and rode along the beach. We had a four-wheel drive following us on the beach and I asked them if I could drive the car for a bit. I managed to get it bogged. Idiot!

  Some nights we just sat in one of our rooms and played games until one o’clock in the morning. We were carrying on like we were still children, making each other laugh and taking the piss out of each other. If you look in depth at the lives that my siblings are leading, there are plenty of issues they face. But for that time in New Zealand we felt like carefree kids again, which was a truly great thing.

  Being true to who you are

  MY TRIP TO New Zealand put me in a great headspace to have a really strong finish to my pre-season training back at Collingwood. I worked super hard on the track and in the gym throughout January, and thanks to the support I received from all of the club’s fitness staff—Michelle, a physio, in particular—I got so fit that I felt like I was seventeen again. I kept thinking, I wish I wasn’t twenty-eight. I wish this was all happening ten years ago.

  My favourite memory of training in January was completing my first full session on the track. I achieved this milestone on 10 January, just two weeks before our Australia Day practice match against the Western Bulldogs. I was so excited in the lead-up to that session that I arrived at the club three hours early. I just couldn’t wait to get out there with my teammates. There were a few funny moments early in the session, because five minutes in I found myself gasping for air. I was thinking, Am I really unfit or are these guys over-the-top fit? Do you know that feeling when you’re overexcited and happy, and you literally can’t breathe? That’s what it was like. So it took me about half an hour to get into the groove on the track and then suddenly everything felt right. I was like, Yeah, this is it. I was so happy. I seriously couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

  When we took on the Dogs on Australia Day, the weather was great and quite a few people turned up to see the match. I kicked one goal as we lost to one of the premiership favourites by only a few points. However, it was a frustrating game at times, as it was often quite congested, with lots of players crowded around the ball. I’m not exactly sure what caused this, but I think the nerves among the players probably played a part. A lot of players seemed a bit scared to take a risk and move the ball out into the open. This was understandable in a way, given we were all playing for spots in our clubs’ first official games.

  Post-match, our coach spoke about maybe introducing some new rules into the women’s competition to prevent so many players from crowding around the ball. He suggested that a good rule would be to make sure that each team has two of their players inside their forward and defensive 50-metre arcs at all times. I think this would open the game up in a big way. It would certainly help me as a forward. There’s nothing worse than having heaps of players dropping back in front of me and taking away my space to lead. And, when you think about it, the women’s game needs to be all about entertainment. No one wants to come along to games and see defensive tactics that lead to a final score of two goals versus one goal. Everyone wants to see exciting play with forwards taking big marks. I know I’m biased, given I’m a key forward, but I have no doubt that when people go to the footy they want to see lots of goals.

  After our loss to the Bulldogs, it was time for the real stuff— the official AFL Women’s league games—to start. It was time for the dreams of every woman who has ever played our great game to come true. The lead-up to our historic clash with Carlton at Princes Park (or Ikon Park, to use its commercial name) was something of a blur. I did so many media appearances that I lost count of them. In fact, I did so much media that finding the time for training was a battle. But that period of time was so much fun. It was amazing to see women’s footy all over the newspapers and the nightly news. I was rapt to feature in a documentary called League Of Her Own, which had award-winning producer Nicole Minchin and sports journalist and author Angela Pippos on board, and detailed the long struggle to bring women’s footy into the mainstream. I was rapt to see people like Debbie Lee and Lisa Hardeman featured. They were among the true pioneers of women’s footy. People like me owe them a great deal of thanks and respect.

  As I look back to the beginning of the AFL women’s competition, it feels like we had a dream run. It was such a positive start—the way the public got on board, the way the media took it on, the way the AFL backed it. Those first weeks of training and the start of the competition, it felt like so many dreams were being realised, not only for the girls playing, but for all those watching on the sidelines.

  The most incredible part of the AFL women’s season, and the thing that I will never forget, is the love and enthusiasm for us in the community, even from people who have not previously followed AFL. The highlight for me of the entire season was when people cried after the first bounce. I had shocking nerves, as I mentioned earlier, but the roars from the crowd just kept us all going and we felt like we were playing on a cloud. That game was a blur of nerves and excitement. It took until the second game for me to find my rhythm. I had started to realise that each game was going to be completely different, and that I could never anticipate how a team would play. That you could never really know what your opposition would be like, and once you felt you had a handle on them, they could change direction. I’ve played a lot of footy in my life, but playing AFL is something completely different.

  It’s been an incredible ride. I still have to pinch myself every time I think about the opportunity I have been given to play AFLW It has been amazing what these women in the competition have been able to achieve in the first year, especially off the back of a limited preparation and us playing together for the first time. For the girls who are starting out playing footy now, there will one day be a full-time AFL women’s league, and they will get paid to play footy all year, however for the current women playing, we are just so excited at being given this opportunity. It’s been a long time coming. Way too late for Susan Alberti, but I’m so lucky that I get to ride one of the first footy waves.

  As I look to the future, being myself and helping my family are the things that drive me the most. I am so happy that I have been able to make Mum proud. My mum has looked after a lot of the people in our family over the years. But I am proud that I can financially, emotionally and physically support her now. Ag
ain, that makes me happier than anything else in the world—even more than footy. That’s what most of the money I am making from football is going towards. I have been able to give her enough money for a house deposit in February, so now she can buy a house and set herself up so that she can enjoy the rest of her life in a bit of comfort. Mum has done it so hard over the years, but I am going to try to give her the life that she deserves.

  When I go and hang out with Vinny and her friends, I learn so much from them because they look at life in a simple way: they just love life. Whereas everybody else is trying to be something that they’re not, or get to somewhere they don’t really need to go, Vinny and her mates don’t feel like they need to conform to other people’s expectations. They’re not hung up about buying a house by a certain age or being married before they’re thirty. I really think there are lessons for all of us in the way people like Vinny see the world. Maybe we should recognise how much they can help us, rather than us thinking we are helping them.

  When I think about footy, I can’t help but marvel at how much the game means to me. There’s no doubt, I fell out of love with it for a while in my twenties, but now it’s as important to me as when I was a little kid who slept with a small Sherrin under her pillow. I’d happily watch all nine games of AFL footy every weekend if I could find the time. I think the way the game is played today is sensational.

  It is so fast and skilful and tough. If you ever hear people saying that today’s footy is soft compared with the old days, you should give them a nudge in the ribs and set them straight. Today’s footy is incredibly tough.You have to remember that the players have never been bigger, stronger or fitter. This means they crash into harder bodies at greater speed than ever before. Our game is surely the most physically demanding code of football on the planet, but it’s also the most entertaining. I love watching players take high marks and kick big goals.