Woodville-West Torrens’ Jaimi Tabb is hoping her level head and strong reputation as a ‘tackling machine’ will help her realise her AFLW draft dream
Jaimi Tabb describes being invited to the AFLW draft combine, currently underway in Melbourne, as one of the greatest privileges of her young life so far. Next up, the Yo-Yo test.
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In January this year, the Crows AFLW squad — gun midfielder Ebony Marinoff among them — lined up at the club’s West Lakes headquarters to undergo the Yo-Yo endurance test.
By the end of that strenuous fitness test, 19 of the squad members had produced personal bests. As the Crows were preparing for the 2019 AFLW season — a season that would ultimately result in a resounding grand final victory in late March — the personal bests were proof of how important fitness and endurance have become in women’s football.
Watching from the sidelines that night was Jaimi Tabb, an inside midfielder from Woodville-West Torrens who had just been re-selected for the AFLW’s junior development academy.
Fast forward nine months and on Wednesday, Tabb will be put through her own Yo-Yo test, as part of the testing component of the AFLW draft combine underway in Melbourne.
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Hoping to be drafted by Adelaide on October 22, Tabb, who turned 18 in February, can’t speak highly enough of the professionalism of what she witnessed that evening in January.
“Through the AFLW Academy we got to do some sessions with the Crows, so that helped me a lot,” she said.
“What impresses me about the club are the people, and what they do, not only for themselves, but for their teammates around them.”
If she could single out one Crow as a role model, it’s Adelaide’s co-captain — and Crows Talent Academy coach — Chelsea Randall.
“She’s had a major influence and has always been there to help me out through the Crows Academies,” Tabb said on day one of the AFLW draft combine at the MCG.
“She’s a great person on and off the field and she’s always giving to others and that’s something I admire as well.”
Tabb and Randall have something in common, too: their reputations as fierce tacklers. If you come across Tabb’s scout notes, they all describe her as one tough player.
“She was a tackling machine,” one expert said in an online summary of her game during the under-18 AFLW National Championships this year. “Time and time again (she) locked the ball up and nullified contests.”
Tabb is one of four South Australians attending this year’s AFLW draft combine, alongside West Adelaide’s Madison Newman, and South Adelaide’s Montana McKinnon and Hannah Munyard.
Tabb, who moved from Adelaide to Moonta Bay on the Yorke Peninsula with when she was seven (playing every sport including basketball), returned to Adelaide for Year 10, boarding at Immanuel College. But for the past two years she has been living in a rented place with her older brother.
She says that has given her life skills she wouldn’t have developed otherwise.
“I’m more focused on myself and learning my own skills and giving my body a rest and knowing when it’s too full on and when it’s not,” she said.
The 168cm mid has given up basketball to concentrate on her dream of being drafted and she’ll learn whether that dream will come true on AFLW draft day on October 22 — ironically, the same week as the final one of Year 12.
There’s no denying she’s excited about what’s ahead.
“When I was a kid, you couldn’t even play football and now 18 years on, I get the opportunity,” she said.
“It’s nerve-racking, but exciting at the same time because you don’t know where you life is going to go.”
However she does hope that her future holds one thing: being able to head back to the Crows West Lakes headquarters for one more Yo-Yo test. It’s just that this time, she hopes she’ll be running in it, not just watching from the sidelines.