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Staunton's journey to the 2023 AFLW Draft
Illawarra Mercury
Follow
12/15/2023
South Coast talent Mel Staunton speaks about her journey to becoming a potential AFLW player, having nominated for the 2023 AFLW Draft this Monday night. Video: AFL NSW/ACT
Category
🥇
Sports
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
Since I started I was just really lucky to have that competitive feather in my cap.
00:06
I'm definitely head in the game for football at the moment and I'm loving it.
00:10
My name is Melanie Staunton and I play for East Coast Eagles.
00:14
My main position is centre but also learning new positions up and forward.
00:20
I would describe myself as a hardball winner.
00:23
I definitely look up to Taylor Harris heaps and her physicality around the contest as well.
00:28
I love Elyse Parker, love Tani Evans, all of them.
00:31
They're an amazing bunch of girls and I love the culture around the club as well.
00:35
I've been fortunate to be submerged in that lately which has been unreal.
00:39
I started playing Auskick when I was really young and that was only for about a year.
00:44
And then growing up I was jumping between heaps of different sports.
00:48
Started playing under 9s at the Ola Dola Dockers with the blokes because there was no female teams.
00:54
And then got to under 15s and told I wasn't allowed to play anymore.
00:57
So I was pretty much ready to walk away from the sport and just mainly focus on surfing.
01:03
Surfing's a really good outlet that will always be there for me and who knows,
01:07
I might win a world title in a few years after my football career.
01:10
I was lucky enough to get dispensation to play in the senior comp as a coach from home.
01:16
I was pretty much napping at her heels, let me play senior fitting.
01:20
She's always told me growing up she didn't have that same opportunity and it was really hard
01:25
because there wasn't that pathway for her.
01:28
She didn't want that to happen to anyone else so she put in everything that she could
01:32
to try and help me be able to play footy.
01:35
I loved going out there knowing that I was the smallest, knowing that I had nothing to me.
01:40
But I knew that I wasn't going to back down to the challenge.
01:43
I did get squished a lot of the time but I used my speed to my advantage.
01:48
And then got picked up by the Giants and started the academy.
01:52
Yeah, now we're here.
01:53
[MUSIC]
01:56
[Music]
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