For Geelong, identifying ladies football talent is all about feet on Irish ground

"The Irish girls are doing it since they were six. It is natural to them."

Tue, 19 Mar, 2024 - 06:45

Maurice Brosnan

It is a work trip. Work could be worse. Dan Lowther is sitting in the heart of Galway city, one of the many enthusiastic visitors, in the middle of his second annual excursion to Ireland.

Over eight days he will meet some current and future players as well as their families. He will jump across the Irish sea and spend some time with Premier League clubs. He will serve Geelong in the best way he sees fit. That means these purposeful quests. Lowther is the head coach of their AFLW team. He was appointed in 2021 and led the Victoria outfit to the final four for the first time ever last season with Irish stars spearheading their surge.

“Our strategy around getting Irish talent is feet on the ground,” he explains. “Being here face-to-face, going the extra mile. It is easy to say jump on a Zoom meeting, we’ll tell you all the things you want to hear, that has happened in the past. But as I say, it is easy.”

That strategy is succeeding. No Australian club has more Irish talent, men’s and women’s. The last two highly sought prospects were Tipperary’s Aishling Moloney and Offaly’s Kate Kenny. Geelong won both races. Their women’s programme now has four Irish players on the list: Moloney, Kenny, Tipperary’s Anna-Rose Kennedy and Mayo’s Rachel Kearns.

Lowther sits back in the city centre coffee shop, completely at ease. That is not to say he is casual. Every utterance is carefully considered. Some sides go to tediously overwrought pains to ensure their ventures to Ireland are kept under wraps. The Cats do their business out in the open.

He poses for photographs with the Irish Australian embassy after presenting them with a signed Geelong jersey. He attends LGFA fixtures with his player’s families. This is a signal and a show of strength. For all intents and purposes, Geelong are invested here. They are at home here. That gives them an edge.

Lowther is admirably open and willing to talk at length about his own career, the recruitment process and the future of Irish women in the AFLW. There is some space for downtime over the next few days. The Melbourne native is in Galway for one night with his wife, Tanya, to meet lifelong friends who emigrated to Ireland a decade ago. That catchup is sandwiched between a spell in Offaly with Kenny and her family and Tipperary’s league clash with Monaghan.

Last year, the Cats secured Aisling Moloney’s signature hours before the deadline after Lowther, captain Meg McDonald and their Irish-based scout met her family and gave a presentation. She went on to notch 10 goals in 13 games and the AFL Best First Year Player Award. Tipp team-mate Kennedy also made the move. They take a gamble by using their budget allocation for Irish pursuits. That gamble continues to pay off.

“We want to fully appreciate the distance, the connection piece. For an Aishling Moloney or Rachel Kearns. It is a two or three-year process. With their study or work, it is not about a short-term thing, get them next year. These things take time.

“The Aishling one, there was a real need to get the best talent and it wasn’t in the draft. Aishling was already at the standard. We back our system to train her and play her game. I knew a couple of clubs were in the area chasing her; Brisbane was one that was well publicised. Craig (Starcevich) lives in Switzerland half the year so it is an easy jump over.

“We thought, what is there to lose? Let’s meet her and connect. We met her parents, walked around the village, got an understanding of the person rather than the athlete. Same with Anna-Rose, it became a two for one and she will be great for us. With Kate Kenny it was the same deal.

“We have to show our interest and appreciation for what they are giving up to play for us. That was our approach and it has worked so far. Kate was a great get for us recently.”

Moloney is already earning rave reviews as a rookie. Lowther has suggested she is “becoming the face of the competition.” “She was voted the best first year player which was a huge achievement,” he stresses. “She only trained for four or five weeks pre-season; I don’t want players to get caught up in the specificity of the game. My simple instruction was play like you do here. You’ll get time to get used to the footy and the bounce of it. Accept the fact that the game is chaotic and full of mistakes. If you can do that, you’ll thrive.

“They embrace the physicality. Now you need to do that for us, it won’t work without that. But just go and play Gaelic. You are a scorer, try to score. You’ll learn the other stuff.

“Even with Kate Kenny, her brother had spent some time in the game before and he was talking about the technicality of the kick, lace positioning and everything. We were stressing, ‘don’t worry about it. Chill. You will pick it up.’”

Geelong is his code and his club. As an 18-year-old, he was drafted by Geelong and joined a squad that included Gary Ablett Sr., Michael Mansfield and Garry Hocking. He quickly learned about the industry’s predicaments and peculiarities. At one point he was delisted and immediately redrafted to alleviate a salary cap situation that he still doesn’t fully understand.

After retirement he became a teacher. Then the club came calling again.

“I found my way into the AFL as a football analyst. That was full-time so I gave up teaching for that. Then Covid hit, I went back to teaching which I really enjoyed. Then I got a call from Paul (Hood) who was still AFLW coach to ask would I like to be involved.

“At the time I was like, well I’ve just been kicked out the door by Geelong. I’m not really in a rush back. But when it was about coaching at that level, it was a really positive spin. From my first week, I knew it was the right environment.”

Kate Kenny of DCU and Offaly during the 2024 Ladies HEC O'Connor Cup final. Picture: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

He is the AFLW full-time coach yet Geelong are a fully integrated side in a one-club town. His travels will include some time with the Liverpool women’s’ team to see how they operate. Geelong frequently do craft sessions, like ball-handling, together. One is always there to help the other.

For a time AFLW needed that help. Lowther openly admits that. The league only launched in 2017 and at the time had none of the underage pathways necessary to supply the consistent pool of talent required to sustain a competition.

Gradually it expanded and academies kicked into gear. As a consequence of that, the demand for Irish players was heightened. That pressure is lessening now, the upcoming draft class is reported to be the best yet. The latest collective bargaining agreement suggests full-time professionalism is not that far away. The Players Association have set a target of 2026.

It means the bar is rising. Irish women will still be recruited but only if they can compete with the best.

“When I first started as a coach it was the fundamentals,” Lowther explains. “Kick, mark, handball. They were just, in my opinion, not at the level needed. So what was happening, in places you’d conversations about what a game style should look like. Fine, but you can’t kick the ball.

“Our strategy over the last two years was to be really strong on fundamentals. Now we can move the ball and play a certain style. The young girls being drafted have those fundamentals.

“To be fair, those first few seasons were dual sport athletes, full-time workers, they couldn’t hone their craft with fundamental training. There is no excuse now. Meanwhile the Irish girls are doing it since they were six. It is natural to them.

“They will continue to fit in, but the league is rising too. Over the next two or three seasons the game will go another level again.”