Clara Fitzpatrick – Irish Warrior
After a long journey from the opposite side of the world, within weeks of starting her career with St.Kilda’s AFLW team Irishwoman Clara Fitzpatrick took a shortcut. In round two she embarked upon some time travel. Suffering concussion after a run-in with a leaping pack, she leap-frogged right past round three and straight into round four. She missed the game courtesy of an order from the club medicos. Having already received a head whack big enough for her to collect some stitches along her right brow, you could be excused for thinking Fitzpatrick might’ve had second thoughts about her life-altering decision to take up professional Australian Rules football. But she says she’s never felt more welcome than in this school of hard knocks.
Saints AFLW defender and mid-fielder Clara Fitzpatrick copped a blow to the brow which required stitches, and the next week was knocked out – quite an introduction to professional Australian Rules football!
“There’s a real community feel to this club,” says Fitzpatrick in a mellow Irish lilt. “It’s pretty amazing to see how it runs here.” She says she felt “a bit dizzy” for a couple of days after her collision, which occurred in the final minutes of round two against Adelaide, but “the AFL has good protocols in place.” Because she’s a qualified physiotherapist she had some awareness of that necessity. The Saints training began in mid-November last year and 29 year old Fitzpatrick says “the experience has been amazing. It’s more professional than anything else I’ve been involved in. And there’s the culture as well – we’re creating a family. I’m absolutely loving it!”
Ireland is a long way from Australia – obvious, but still worth noting because of the context it provides to Fitzpatrick’s circuitous route into the Australian Football League Women’s competition. She started her football journey amongst the small farms and greenery of County Down in Northern Ireland, about 50km south of Belfast. Her family lived in the tiny village of Bryansford (population around 400). She went to a primary school up the road and a high school just 30 minutes away. But, unlike every other member of her immediate family, including two brothers and one sister, (and with the exception of her grandfather who occasionally kicked a ball to her), she was attracted to sport. She tried a bit of netball, rugby, and even lifesaving (some challenge in the bracing Irish Sea waters!), but soon settled on Gaelic football, which is close to a national obsession, yet remains purely amateur. She played with Bryansford and then her county team. Between 2009 and 2012 Fitzpatrick studied her physiotherapy degree at the University of Ulster in Jordanstown and played Gaelic football for the university. Then from 2012 to 2014 she was part of University College Dublin’s Gaelic team while she studied her Masters of physiotherapy.
Fitzpatrick says one of the over-riding benefits she has picked up from the Saints AFLW team has been the “family” feeling amongst the group of mainly young players.
In 2015 from May to September she took off for Boston in the US, where there’s a strong Irish diaspora. Her aim was to play Gaelic football. Friends had told her about various tournaments in America so she decided to try her luck there. Her physio skills came in handy at times, but eventually she returned to Ireland.
In April 2016 a friend told her about a ‘come and try’ day for AFL football. On a fine Spring day around 20 people turned up to try this antipodean sport. Fitzpatrick says she knew of it through the International Rules series which had been played between her country and the AFL. With the assistance of the AFL Ireland Women’s group she played in two Australian Rules tournaments over 2016 as a member of the “Irish Banshees” team, once in May in London, and a second time in October in Portugal. But she says, “It was just random; I was still playing Gaelic football.”
Then she decided to take a year off “to come to Australia and see the world”. She didn’t really have any intention to play Australian Rules. She landed in Melbourne in November 2016 and the Irish contingent in town soon got her involved in the Gaelic club Sinn Fein which she played with over the next two years. Through club connections she got involved with the Diamond Creek football club, spreading her time between Gaelic and Australian Rules football. To support herself, for a time she got work on a dairy farm near Warrnambool, missing some football in the process. In 2017 a lot of Diamond Creek players started joining in the new AFLW competition. Experienced Diamond Creek coach Scott Gowans moved to Melbourne University as part of his step towards coaching the upcoming North Melbourne AFLW side. Melbourne Uni was a feeder team for North and Fitzpatrick went to Melbourne University with him.
She says she fitted into the ruck slot at both Diamond Creek and Melbourne Uni. “I’d played in the midfield in Gaelic football. I was a little bit lost in terms of structures. There’s less structure in Gaelic – it’s a bit more random. But I was probably progressing – it’s learn as you do, and as you go. It suited me!” she says.
She played a season with Melbourne Uni, but was influenced by a friend to try out with the Southern Saints. She says that after meeting with them and training “I thought they were good with player development.” She started 2019 playing Gaelic football, but during this time she rang coach Peta Searle, who got back to her a couple of days later. “I think she looked at some footage of my games at Melbourne Uni,” says Fitzpatrick. “She invited me down to train around February and March for the start of the Southern Saints season.” She says at that stage it was a pretty big list. “I thought I had to develop my skills and that’s what Peta said,” says Fitzpatrick. “I think they thought if they could clean that up, they were happy with the raw talent.”
Fitzpatrick says that while Gaelic football and its free-flowing nature have helped her come to grips with AFL football, the structures and game plans involved in high-level Australian Rules have taken longer to grasp.
As the musical chairs began and the list began to shrink, Fitzpatrick survived the culling and kept working away. “It was pretty crazy. There is such a good culture in the club, it makes it a bit more special. It’s such a caring culture.” The Irishwoman says she put a lot of work into listening to the coaches and the hard work ultimately paid off. She was announced as a member of the final list during a team meeting after she’d performed an Irish jig as part of a regular reading of penalties that various players copped.
“Oh geez!” she says in her Irish brogue, “It was unbelievable, very surreal. I was in shock!” When the final playing list was announced and she had made the cut she phoned home. She says her distinctly non-sporting parents didn’t know the extent of her achievement, “but they support me”. Now they’re rapidly learning about AFLW!
Last year, towards the end the Southern Saints season, Fitzpatrick took three weeks off to play in the Australasian team for the World games in Gaelic football around Dublin, but upon her return she was selected to play in the final home and away game against Richmond. She says proudly she kept Sabrina Frederick (the powerful Richmond forward) goalless. “It was lovely to be back in the team,” she says.
Fitzpatrick declares, “If you enjoy it, you play your best football. You don’t have to take the enjoyment out of it. Peta has high standards. But what I really like is how enjoyable it is to get around the girls.” She says St.Kilda is different to other clubs she’s been involved with, and more like Gaelic clubs. “Everybody is on a par here. It’s a tight club; the men get involved with the women’s team. It’s more like a family”.
She continues, “The experience has been amazing. It’s more professional than anything I’ve been involved in. The culture is great as well. We’re creating a family. I’m absolutely loving it.”
Fitzpatrick felt the young team had gelled by mid-way through its short eight-week season, which made it all the more galling that after she was knocked out in the final minutes of the round two game against Adelaide she was required to sit out the round three game against Melbourne. It was in that round the Saints scored their first inspirational win.
Knocked out in round two against Adelaide after a desperate launch into a pack, Fitzpatrick was taken from the ground on a stretcher with concussion. She missed one game before returning in round four.
Her concussion came in the last quarter of the Adelaide game after she flew for a ball in the backline against a pack coming the other way. It was a roll of the dice that she lost out on. But the Saints were ahead at the time and desperate measures were needed. As a Gaelic footballer Fitzpatrick feels she has developed reasonable game awareness, but in this tense scenario she only had eyes for the ball, and as she hit the ground her head bounced on the turf. It’s not the only time she’s been injured. In her Gaelic career she has undergone two ACL knee reconstructions. She says she feels for the women in the league who are doing ACL injuries (including teammates Nadia Von Bertouch and Tarni White) and as a physio she appreciates the necessity to do as much as possible to avoid the problem. Having had ACL surgery she thinks the women currently injured should come back unimpeded.
She’s aware she has to improve her skills, and of the necessity to get her head around game plans and structures, which aren’t a big part of the Gaelic game. But she says her backline coach has also told her not to “overthink” it. “He told me that structures are important, but not to get too caught up in it.”
With skills she has developed from her experience in Gaelic football, Fitzpatrick has been a natural fit in the AFLW Saints backline, but also through the mid-field.
Gym work has also been a new element for her. “I enjoy the gym, but I haven’t done that sort of work regularly before this season.” She says she’d rather go running, “But it’s only there to do you good.”
Having lost three of the first four games (albeit two in the last minutes of very tight contests) at the mid-way point of the season it seemed unlikely the Saints would make the finals in their inaugural season. Nonetheless the team’s progress has been significant.
Fitzpatrick says she’d love to be involved beyond this first historic season, though visa and work issues may complicate her plans. “We’ve done pretty well so far,” she says, “For a first year team I’m pretty happy.”
(Note: After round five against Carlton all Saints matches – in fact all AFLW matches except a Friday night game – were concluded without crowds due to the influence of coronavirus. After round six the season was shortened so that finals could be played. St.Kilda won two of six matches and thus did not participate in the finals series. The final series was soon abandoned due to coronavirus.)
* Words and images by Robert Keeley.
At the professional level the AFLW players are educated in the mental approach to the game, as well as the physical and skill-based elements.
Training at the clubs RSEA Park facilities has involved skills, fitness, and gym work, which has been a new experience for the Gaelic footballer.
A pre-game warm up in the rooms before the game against Carlton.
Fitzpatrick in action during the heat of a contest against Carlton at Ikon Park. Good crowds attended most matches during the season – until Coronavirus hit!