Tayla Harris: ‘my critics say I’m just some girl who got lucky’

AFLW Tayla Haris sets the record straight about THAT infamous kick and answers her critics in a new documentary.

When AFLW star Tayla Harris launched a ball high in the air, scoring a goal in a 2019 match, her fine form was captured for the ages. But the social media uproar generated by that photo put her multi-sport career, and her personal life, under an impossibly fine microscope. Now front and centre in Kick Like Tayla, Harris tells The Binge Guide, “I had to straighten out the story.”

If her critics have voiced it, Tayla Harris has heard it. The footy star, immortalised mid-kick in a 2019 image that became an iconic photo in the annals of Australian sport, has seen all too well how her naysayers haven’t been exactly shy.

“I know what they say,” she tells The Binge Guide. “I’m overrated. Overpaid. I’m just some girl who got lucky with a photo. But they have no idea who I am.”

From the well-publicised online sexual harassment she faced over that photo to the negative commentary over her supposed pay demands, Harris’ AFLW career has been more heavily scrutinised than any other. Now, she’s taking control of her own narrative and staring down those online trolls with a plea to be kinder in her revealing new documentary Kick Like Tayla.

Tayla Harris: “I know what they say...I’m overrrated. Overpaid. I’m just some girl who got lucky.” Picture: Cameron Grayson for Stellar 2019

“I really trust the crew who put this together, and I think that was a key part of

it in order to have that vulnerability,” she says of filming the documentary, in which she shares her story and discusses – sometimes tearfully – how that negative attention made her feel.

“I think to be able to actually tell the truth without it being manipulated in different ways is a real rarity at this point.”

While the 25-year-old sports star – who’s also a successful professional boxer – had creative input into the film’s content and editing, she hasn’t shied away from tackling some painful and controversial terrain, albeit within reason.

“Well, no-one else is going to do it for me, so I guess I had to straighten out the story,” she concedes with a shrug, especially in regards to the emotional fallout from the media storm over her final season with Carlton in 2021.

“But then, the details of how certain things have happened along the way aren’t necessary to tell the public. Some things [like salary] are important to keep to yourself.”

While the documentary certainly gives viewers far more insight into what makes Harris tick her close relationship with her family and partner, her beloved pet dogs, and her early beginnings as a player – she’s under no illusions that it will make her detractors think twice before they speak or post, or watch it at all.

“I’m not really interested in their opinion,” she declares. “If it changes someone’s mind, then that’s a good step. But it’s not my job to change other people’s minds.”

Harris does, however, hope that she can encourage people to stand up to bullies and inspire young girls to follow their dreams. She’s also buoyed by the wave of films about high-profile women and public figures still in their prime, such as Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift.

“I recently watched one on Naomi Osaka and she’s younger than me,” Harris says. “I certainly bought into that narrative that you did have to be older and have lived life [to film a documentary], but I feel like these sorts of things are ways to get people on board for the ride, and with social media.”

Tayla Harris stars on the cover of this Sunday’s The Binge Guide.

Harris says there are many more chapters yet to be told in her story, one that could become the basis for a biopic. If that were to happen, Harris – who has ambitions of acting once she hangs up her footy boots and her boxing gloves – says she would want to play herself.

“But if I wasn’t available due to other commitments,” she adds, “Jennifer Lawrence might be available, and she would do fine.”