Adelaide Crows midfielder Ebony Marinoff on working hard, the power of silence, and letting success make all the noise
She’s routinely considered one of the entertaining personalities inside the Crows AFLW squad, which is what makes her inspiration somewhat surprising.
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Ebony Marinoff has a screen saver on her phone — it’s a quote and it inspires her every day. It reads: “Work hard in silence and let success be your noise”, which, if you speak to her teammates, is somewhat ironic given she’s generally considered one of the loudest Crows in the AFLW squad.
But however loud she might be (she famously made headlines at the 2017 AFLW Best and Fairest count when she interrupted winner Erin Phillips’s live interview by saying she was going to quit her job at Foodland), her work ethic speaks for itself.
The Crows No. 10 finished off last season with a back injury — not to mention with her other 2018 injuries: a split tongue and deep gash under one eye. But the back required dedicated rehab. She did this in silence.
“I got quite a big knock against GWS in round (four) and unfortunately in the nature of AFLW (with seven minor rounds), you don’t have time to rehab it,” she says.
“So I was a bit sore and at the end of the season I got a scan and it showed up what it showed up and you get in rehab. But you see across the footy industry, (back injuries) don’t rehab quickly, and I knew that being so young I needed to get my back right … I couldn’t even do a ground ball.
“AFLW last year was so disappointing, I just thought: What do I do next?”
So she worked hard. Really hard. There was a lot of rehab, followed by extra catch up sessions: boxing, swimming, upper bodywork, “smashing core”.
This extra work meant she could play a handful of VFLW games last winter and then started the AFLW pre-season having lost a few kilos and at personal-best fitness levels. Post-Christmas she posted a best in the club’s yoyo test.
“To be fresh and right for AFLW pre-season has been really exciting for me …. I’m feeling fit and feeling like I’ve done the work, like I couldn’t have done anything more to play my best footy,” she says.
After the Crows spectacularly became inaugural AFLW premiers, last year they missed out on making the grand final by one win. Everyone in the squad talks about the disappointment of that second season and equally everyone is using it as motivation for this year.
A lot has happened in the 12 months since that disappointing second season: there was the exit of inaugural coach Bec Goddard, the appointment of new head coach Matthew “Doc” Clarke, the announcement of a new assistant coach in Narelle Smith and the exit of and addition of 10 players.
It’s fair to say this is a new look team taking to the track in 2019.
But Marinoff — “Noffy” to her teammates — is somewhat of a stalwart. As a third-year player the midfielder is one of the most experienced in the side. But at 21, she’s also one of the youngest.
“We came back from Christmas and we did a bit of a task and Doc asked everyone to please get in age order and I was still the fifth youngest and I thought: ‘I’m still a little baby’,” she says with her characteristic laugh.
Born in Adelaide’s western suburbs in 1997, Marinoff discovered football by accident after filling in for an Auskick session when she was five. She became a standout on the field, the only girl at the Lockleys Football Club playing alongside the boys. But when she was 14, she was resigned to the reality of women’s football at the time: girls simply didn’t play past 15.
“I remember as clear as day, I played at Woodville Oval, we were in a grand final, we lost and it was my last ever game. And I’d come to terms with the fact that I could no longer play … I understood that and I wasn’t going to fight against it. I was 14. I didn’t agree with it, but I did accept it.”
Six months on and she was playing high school girls football at St Michael’s College — just for fun — and was given the chance to try out for the state Under 15s team. But to qualify, she was told, she’d need to play three games of local women’s footy. Women’s footy? This was a thing?
“Then I found out there was actually an Under 18s league,” she says.
“So, I’d played that last game at Lockleys and I thought that was the end, but really it was just the beginning.”
She made the state team and there she met a coach/runner called Courtney Cramey. Cramey told her about a club called Morphettville Park, “Morphys”.
“I’ve won five premierships with them,” Noffy says. “Three Women’s Division 1 premierships and I won two under-18 premierships.”
Cramey and Marinoff are now great mates and play alongside each other in the Crows tricolours. Cramey was one of the club’s initial marquee signings (along with the likes of Angela Foley and Chelsea Randall). Marinoff — who grew up supporting the Crows and remembers sitting in the stands at Footy Park with her Pappa Jim eating hot dogs as Mark Ricciuto was running around — holds the honour as the first AFLW player to be drafted by the Crows. She then went on to become the AFLW’s inaugural Rising Star.
“A lot of people say that you live and breathe footy and that’s not a lie because I do,” she says. “But I also love going to the beach, going to the river, I love sun, I love hanging out with my friends. I’m a big foodie, so I love going out for lunch, breakfast, dinner, you name it whatever meal it is.
“Growing up I wanted to be a chef and I still love cooking. I cook for some of the girls, they come over for dinner. I love, love cooking. My best dish, my signature dish is I make a good Thai green chicken curry.
“But it’s probably one thing: I don’t really have passion elsewhere in an occupation. I’m pretty happy and content playing footy.”
She did quit Foodland and now works part-time at the Adelaide Football Club working across the female community space and in the commercial team.
“I say to the girls, it’s a whole new world up there with the figures and numbers and partnerships and corporate sponsors and everything that goes on behind doors, the phone calls, events. It’s a different world up there.
“Us being part-time athletes we can go up there and realise there is so much more to it than the boys would see.”
Her sporting talent should be no surprise, really. After all sporting ability runs in the family. Her older brother, Daniel, is a 23-year-old pilot, but Marinoff says he could have played any sport he wanted to.
“Football player, swimmer, surf life saver, soccer player, cricket player you name it,” she says.
“But he probably doesn’t have the drive and competitive nature that I do. In saying that he could probably go and play footy on the weekend and still kill it, so he’s got the natural talent, it’s just that I have to work a bit harder than him.
“You look at some people who are naturally gifted who can come in without training too hard or working too hard, but the best thing is when you know you’ve worked so hard for something and improved.
“It’s a bit of a cliche, but they say hard work comes in and beats talent sometimes and there comes a point when talent’s not enough anymore and you’ve got to put in more hard yards. I guess that’s what a lot of people learn in AFLW especially as the years go on and all the other teams work harder, then you’ve got to step it up.”
This is where Marinoff’s silence comes in. And while she’ll always be up for a hearty conversation, or to belt out on a song on a team bus, she knows that it’s all those extra sessions she’s been putting in — all those unseen, undiscussed moments in her week — that, come next weekend, will hopefully do all the talking for her.
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