Broncos NRLW team ready for battle
SHE’S been one of the heroes for the Broncos during the inaugural season of the NRLW. But it’s what this amazing woman is prepared to do for her daugher off field, that is truly incredible.
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FROM the outside, the Brisbane Broncos women’s team look like any other rugby league side.
They have the fullback with the silky skills, the silent assassin in the No. 6 jersey, the inspirational captain, the hardened forwards who have been playing for years but never take a backwards step.
But away from the field, it’s a different story.
They are mothers, full-time workers, students, women who have overcome adversity after adversity.
In this inaugural season of the women’s NRL, also known as the NRLW, they have created history.
Tomorrow, they will do so again when they take on the Roosters for the chance to become the competition’s first ever premiers in Sydney at ANZ Stadium.
Thirty-four players will take to the field, all with their own inspiration, all with a story to tell. Ahead of tomorrow’s game, Broncos utility Lavinia Gould, forward Heather Ballinger and centre Amber Pilley share their stories with Insight.
Lavinia Gould:
Lavinia Gould prides herself on her fearlessness.
When the Brisbane Broncos NRLW coach Paul Dyer rang the rugby union talent earlier this year and asked her to consider a momentary code switch to rugby league, Gould had to weigh up what she could bring to a sport she had never played before. And while she took her time to deliberate, her final decision was easy.
“Fearlessness is what I bring,” she says.
“I love to hit, love to tackle. I love to run with the ball. There’s not a thing on the pitch that I don’t like to do.
“If you let me, I will just run wild out there.”
Gold Coast-based Gould, originally from New Zealand, has had an impressive career in union, including playing for the Black Ferns and, more recently, the Queensland Reds in the inaugural Super W competition.
Now she will add another feather to her cap when she plays in the first women’s NRL grand final tomorrow.
But what is it that makes the 35-year-old so fearless every time she takes the field?
It is her daughters, Kaia and Buzi. The two names are scrawled on Gould’s boots, her way of carrying her beloved children into each and every game. They make her fearless because of the strength they have shown in their young lives, particularly 14-year-old Kaia, who suffers from a serious kidney disease.
Kaia was diagnosed at the age of three and was given a transplant four years ago from her father.
But sadly, in December, things started to go wrong.
“It just went all pear-shaped at Christmas so she’s back on the machines every other day in the hospital,” Gould says.
“She’s on the machine and they’re prolonging the time until she needs another transplant. It’s been a real rollercoaster ride for her this year.
“She had only just been able to live like a normal kid the last three years.
“To see it decline again, it hasn’t been nice. She’s a very strong little girl. She makes me so proud, that girl.”
Gould says when the time comes, she will donate one of her kidneys to Kaia.
“I’m compatible so I’ll be the next one to give her a transplant.
“Whenever she needs it, I’ll be right there giving it. It’s an easy decision when you think about your kids.
“You’re not really giving much up. You’re giving them an opportunity to live a full life. That’s all you want for your kids.”
Understandably, neither Kaia nor Buzi will be in attendance tomorrow at ANZ Stadium. But Gould knows they will be watching on television — she will feel them.
“I wouldn’t be who I am without my two girls.
“As a parent you want to teach your kids all these different things, but in reality they teach us new things.
“I really do think they give me the strength and fearlessness to be whoever it is I want to be, whether it’s in sport or as a mum … they teach me to just be fearless and driven.”
Heather Ballinger:
There is almost nothing that Heather Ballinger wouldn’t do for the game of rugby league.
This was evident from the moment she first saw the sport on television as a nine-year-old while living on the remote property, Sedan, in the small town of Yaraka, 200km south of Longreach.
The sheep and cattle farm had no electricity but she would plead with her parents every week for permission to start up the generator just so she could watch her beloved Broncos play.
“I used to beg mum and dad to turn the generator on for a couple of hours just so I could watch it,” she says.
“Dad would always get a bit annoyed towards the end of the year because the season goes on for a couple of weeks.
“But I had to watch it. I used to walk with the dogs into the dark to turn the engine off after the game.”
It is fitting, then, that Ballinger has the opportunity to play in tomorrow’s history-making grand final with the Broncos, especially as the 36-year-old prepares to hang up her boots for good.
She has come a long way from that young girl who fired up the generator just to watch rugby league and who made the boys of Yaraka fear her tackles.
She has pushed past the stereotypes that girls should only play netball and has moved outside of her comfort zones, travelling from her little home in the bush to Cairns and then to Brisbane to chase her dreams.
Ballinger has overcome serious injuries and hefty credit card debt since she took up the game in 2006. She is one of the few players left who once had to pay her own way to play. She is a real battler, someone who has had to fight for everything she has.
That is why she never thought this NRLW competition would be a possibility, let alone that she would play in a grand final for her favourite club.
“It’s a very male-dominated sport that we were trying to play,” she says.
“I always go back to when I was a little kid watching it on TV, and who would have ever thought there would be a women’s team out there?
“Reality won’t hit until after the premiership is all over and the new year kicks off.
“I never thought this would happen and I can’t wipe the smile off my face.”
There are few who deserve the chance to wear an NRLW jersey as much as Ballinger.
She finally played rugby league for a club in 2006 when she moved to Cairns to study at university. But even then it wasn’t easy.
She tore her ACL in 2007 and people immediately suggested she retire at the age of 24 because it was “too much work”. Instead of listening, she paid for the surgery and recovery herself.
In 2009 she had to fork out for a trip to New Zealand with the Australian Jillaroos side, only to break her ankle two days beforehand, leaving her as a spectator on the sideline.
When the Cairns women’s rugby league folded in 2013, she spent two years flying to Brisbane every weekend just so she could play in the local southeast Queensland competition, paying for this all from her own pocket.
Eventually in August 2015, the Australian Federal Police officer decided to move to the state’s capital.
Women’s rugby league has come along over the 12 years in which Ballinger has been involved. And as she prepares to farewell the game as a player, she will be forever grateful for where rugby league is now.
“For us to have this opportunity and be given this opportunity, it’s just like, wow.
We put so much into it physically, financially, time wise, with work,” she says.
“But I’ll give up my personal leave to achieve what I want to achieve. We never thought it would happen and here it is. I can say I did something that I didn’t even have on my radar.”
Amber Pilley:
When Amber Pilley finished the southeast Queensland women’s grand final in August, victorious once again with the Burleigh Bears, she thought her season
was over.
The celebrations were starting, the Bears had claimed the trophy for the fourth consecutive year and in the NRLW world, the four teams that were competing — the Broncos, Warriors, Dragons and Roosters — had announced all their player signings.
Then Burleigh coach and former Australian women’s captain Tahnee Norris said they needed to talk.
“I was like, ‘Oh no, what have I done?’,” Pilley says, recalling that conversation with Norris. “But she said she’d been in contact with the Broncos coach (Paul Dyer) and he was interested in me
“I thought my season was over. All the marquee players and signings had been made. I had no indication of even being a signing.
“But Paul said there had been an injury and there was room for me to be one of the starting centres. I couldn’t believe it. It was so surreal.
“I can’t thank Tahnee enough. She pushed me the whole time.
“I am one of the few in the team that haven’t made the Queensland team or the Jillaroos. It was truly a shock to me.”
Like one of her favourite comic book heroes, 20-year-old Pilley swooped in and saved the day for Brisbane, playing in their trial against Papua New Guinea, starring in all three of their regular season games and now named for tomorrow’s history-making grand final.
But it was not just Pilley who came to the Broncos’ rescue after they lost NSW talent Jayme Fressard to a season-ending knee injury.
The Gold Coast product says they have helped save her.
Away from the field, Pilley is an avid reader of comic books, a fan of Catwoman and Batman, and says she has the type of bedroom that most 12-year-old boys would envy with its collector figurines and video games.
For someone who seems so confident in who she is, Pilley has anxiety and often puts up barriers around herself.
“I suffer from anxiety and I overthink a lot of things,” she says.
“Against Souths Logan (in the local competition), I dropped four balls in a row and had a meltdown on the field.
“A lot of my barriers have been with myself and my confidence.”
The first of those barriers started to break down when she took up cosplay last year.
Cosplayers make their own costumes based off characters they love, and Pilley, who has been playing rugby league since the age of eight, made her debut at comic convention Supanova last year.
“You put on the costume and you can be whoever you want to be for the day,” she says.
“It was so cool to have little kids look at you. No one knew who I was, but they knew the character.”
Now the Broncos have given her a completely new outlook.
While Pilley will always be grateful for her experiences with the Bears and the Indigenous All Stars, the professionalism and tight team at Brisbane have seen her learn how to trust in herself.
“The Broncos regime has changed my life.
“I can lift from that place where I used to sink into my shell.
“My teammates are so proud of how I’ve grown.
“I am in an environment where I am pushed by my teammates, coaches, family … my coaching staff are 100 per cent on board with the cosplay, too, and want to see pictures all the time.
“The environment with Broncos — we are all misfits but it’s a home. Everyone has their quirks but we are all family in the team.
“No one judges me … We’re all crazy. I now have friends I would consider family.”
rikkilee.arnold@news.com.au
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