She’s only 20, but Eloise Jones is an emerging leader in the Crows AFLW unit and is pumped to return to the training track
From a trip to Singapore, to coaching the Under-15 state team, Crows forward Eloise Jones has been busy in the AFLW off-season, but can’t wait to return to the training track on Monday.
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From a trip to Singapore to inspire the next generation of footy players, to coaching the state’s under-15 girls team, it’s been a busy off-season for Eloise Jones, the Crows’s forward who was still a teenager when she won her first AFLW premiership back in March.
On Monday evening, the Crows squad officially returns to West Lakes for the first full session of pre-season training and with them will be Jones, looking at guiding Adelaide to back-to-back premierships in 2020.
The 169cm forward, who celebrated her 20th birthday less than a month after raising the AFLW premiership cup, has had a jam-packed off-season where she’s juggled keeping up her fitness program with coaching roles away from the field.
Alongside Crows co-captain Chelsea Randall, Jones headed to Singapore in June to spread the AFLW abroad and visited the Australian International School where they shared stories and challenges of football to athlete development students and more than 200 Yr 6s.
On returning to Adelaide she was then elevated from forward line coach to joint-head coach of the state’s under-15 girls team and coached them to a silver medal in the national championships, losing the grand final to arch rivals, Victoria.
“For me, it’s important to give back what I’ve learnt, I can dispense it out and make it exciting for the girls,” Jones, a former basketballer, says.
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“At the end of the day, (as coach) you’ve got to make sure the girls are having fun as well, although you do want to win games of footy, you don’t want to be that structured coach who is benching girls who maybe aren’t performing on the day or being really yelling, stuff like that.
“As much as it is important to put in those structures and roles at a young age, you’ve got to make sure they are having fun and enjoying it at the end of the day because I guess you don’t want to turn them away at such a young age.
“There is an age where girls hit sport and something happens, school stuff gets in the way or whatever and they turn around and don’t come back to the sport, so if you can make it a really fun experience and they can enjoy it, then hopefully they’ll want to come back and play again next year.”
Moving from the player side – Jones herself was a member of the under-15 SA team – to the coaching side has also made her realise she should have been more appreciative of the coaches when she was a junior state player herself.
“I enjoy the coaching side and in a way it’s showing appreciation for what was done when you were that age, I guess as well, as a player you don’t see the side of what people do behind the scenes, team managers and support staff,” she muses.
“I was going on shopping trips … pushing the trolley and buying food for all these girls.
“It makes you really realise I should have thanked these people more when I was a player.”
It should come as no surprise that Jones would say something wise beyond her 20 years. Watch her on the field and she’s an unselfish footballer.
Jones was among the Crows’ best players on March 31, when the side stormed to their second premiership in three years beating Carlton by 45 points at Adelaide Oval in front of a record crowd of 53,034.
Jones kicked one goal, took three marks, laid four tackles and walked off the oval with nine disposals to her name.
One of her highlights that day came in the second quarter when there were just over four minutes left before half time: Crows midfielder Anne Hatchard had cleared the ball out of defence and kicked it to the centre of the ground. It bounced in front of the running Jones, who picked it up and bounced once, tucked the ball under her arm and kept sprinting toward the forward 50. Bounced twice; she was now at the 50m line, and despite the open goal in front of her, she spotted Danielle Ponter on the lead to her left, kicked it over the top of a Blues defender and Ponter finished it off with a running goal, putting the Crows 39 points up.
Then just minutes later, right as the half time siren sounded, Jones took a contested mark 35m out from goal and slotted it through on a 45-degree angle to further increase the Crows’s lead.
In April, Jones – who wanted to be a police officer when she was younger – signed a two-year deal to stay at West Lakes.
“Footy was always really important to me,” she says.
“I remember watching the (Crows win the) 2017 AFLW grand final with my SANFLW teammates from Glenelg and in that moment it realistically set in: there is a pathway, but at that point I never thought that I would get picked up. I never thought it was an option.”
But Jones’s star quality had been spotted by Adelaide’s inaugural coach Bec Goddard in the under-18 state team and by the end of 2017 Jones was in the Crows tricolours having been picked up at the AFLW draft.
And as she reminisces about the “amazing” day that was March 31, 2019, you get the feeling she’s not done yet.
“I look at the premiership medal I have at home, and the guernsey and the hat and the footy boots and the rings, and it doesn’t really set in that I was a premiership player at 19,” she says.
“We were kind of written off a bit in our second season – my very first season – but we know we’ve got a target on our backs in 2020. Hopefully we can have another really good season and continue to grow the AFLW.”