Crows co-captain Erin Phillips on individual awards, keeping eyes on the premiership and getting to play AFLW on Adelaide Oval

Crows co-captain Erin Phillips caps off stellar year with AFL Coaches Association award — but her eyes are firmly on an even bigger prize.

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The best cross-coder the AFLW has seen — former Australian basketballer Erin Phillips — will be using the devastation of losing an Opals quarter-final at the 2016 Olympics as added motivation to beat underdogs Geelong in Sunday’s preliminary final and advance to her second AFLW grand final.

The Crows co-captain said every member of the Adelaide squad could draw on memories of losing a winnable game, to ensure it keeps a lid on its red-hot favouritism going into the weekend’s match.

“We can reflect, all of us, that we’ve been a part of a game where we should have won it, or we shouldn’t have lost it,” she said.

“In my last Olympics (Rio in 2016), Australia versus Serbia, we should have won, we didn’t, so we won’t be taking the Cats lightly at all.”

Importantly, Phillips said the players were doing a great job of keeping the lid on expectation.

“I looked at them (at training on Tuesday night) and they were business as usual … the maturity of the group has been something that’s blown me away,” the 33-year-old said.

Sunday’s preliminary final at Adelaide Oval — with the winner advancing to the grand final on March 31 — will pit the season’s highest scoring team (Crows, with 58 goals) against the lowest (Geelong with 21).

Crows Erin Phillips in action during the AFLW Round 7 match between the Melbourne Demons and the Adelaide Crows at Casey Fields. PHOTO: Michael Willson/AFL Media)

“(Geelong’s) a very young team, so they’ll come out with an attitude, I believe, of having nothing to lose and giving it a red hot go,” Phillips said.

“They’re a better contested marking team than us so there are some areas that we’ve got to take care of them as well.

“For us, every week we’ve been trying to play better footy than the last week and focus on what we can do and I think our game plan is pretty strong.”

Phillips has enjoyed a stellar third year in the AFLW after a persistent quad strain hampered her in 2018.

She spent the off-season going back to basics and properly repairing her injured quad and the hard work has paid serious dividends with Phillips averaging 22 disposals, four marks, four inside-50s and three tackles across the seven rounds, while also kicking nine goals this season.

On Tuesday night that effort was rewarded with her being named the AFL Coaches Association AFLW Champion Player of the Year.

Crows co-captain Erin Phillips has kicked nine goals so far this 2019 season. Picture: AAP Image/Daniel Pockett

But the talented midfielder said while it was nice to be recognised by the coaches, it wasn’t about the individual accolades.

“For me, it’s really about winning premierships … I feel very lucky, but there are bigger prizes,” she said.

“I’m playing good footy in a great team, is how I feel. The development of our team has been astronomical and it’s just been so much fun to play with this group.

“I’m just a part of that journey with them … my individual award is just the extension of what the team’s been able to achieve so far this year.”

Phillips said she was excited the game would be played at South Australia’s premier ground, but she said the side wasn’t worried about the bigger dimensions that would face them there.

“Bigger grounds suit us, we’re a really good running team and we can cover some ground really well,” she said.

“But like I’ve said in the past, put us out in a pasture and we’ll play as hard as we can, we’re going to really enjoy Adelaide Oval, for sure.”