Natalie Wood, Lauren Arnell, Jane Lange and Daisy Pearce would sit in the corner with a serving of spaghetti and garlic bread.

Armed with a pen and a napkin, the Darebin quartet would spend their Friday nights after training unravelling the secrets of women’s football.

Should we deploy a spare? What happens if we push a forward up to the stoppage and play one short? Do we need a sweeper at centre bounces?

Anything was up for discussion or debate, even when the Falcons were well on their way to completing the first of two historic VWFL five-peats.

“They played so much football together,” three-time premiership player and former president Julia Chiera said. “They’re all footy brains. They’re all strategists. They’re all nuffies.

“On Friday night at dinner after training, you had this interesting world where women would be sitting in the corner talking game plans.

“They’d be smashing spaghetti bolognese while drawing diagrams.

“That’s them. They loved it.”

That weekly gathering of Darebin’s greatest emerging football minds has gone on to produce three AFLW head coaches and one esteemed assistant.

Wood was appointed Essendon’s inaugural coach back in 2022 and led the Bombers to a finals berth in the side’s second year.

Arnell is the first former AFLW player to become a senior coach, joining Port Adelaide ahead of the club’s debut season.

Lange was Mick Stinear’s senior assistant at Melbourne when the Demons won their first AFLW flag in season seven.

And Pearce’s coaching career will officially begin on Friday night when she leads West Coast into battle for the first time against Richmond to open the 2024 AFLW season.

But ask those who know her best and they’ll tell you that Pearce has been a mentor in the making long before she wore blue and gold.

Five-time premiership coach Peta Searle remembers the night vividly.

The esteemed mentor took the reins of Darebin ahead of the 2005 season, the same year Pearce arrived at the club as a 15-year-old.

The Daisy origins story was still in its infancy. She was the lone girl in a team of boys when she played junior football in Bright. Only it wasn’t just her gender that turned heads back then but her uncanny ability and class.

She still had to impress Searle though.

“She came down to training and it was the night of team selection,” Searle said. “She was only a kid.

“The way she performed was outstanding. The coach of our seconds side asked me ‘Is Daisy playing ones this week? Do you think she’s ready?’ And I said ‘She’s ready.’ She was clearly ahead of the others.

“We were playing St Albans at their home ground and they were pretty physical with her but she stood tall and was outstanding.

“She’d impact and influence games in crucial moments.”

Pearce won the Falcons best and fairest in her first season and was also best on ground in a losing grand final to Melbourne University.

When Chiera arrived at Darebin in 2010, the Falcons had just won their fourth straight premiership.

“I didn’t know much about women’s footy because it was so small but it quickly became apparent that Daisy was very special,” she said. “Everyone knew who she was.”

Nine teams competed in the VWFL that year. They played 18 a side across 25 minute quarters on boggy grounds in Melbourne’s suburbs. The games themselves were more akin to men’s footy in the 90s than what we see now in the AFLW.

But Pearce was Darebin’s worst-kept secret.

“She was clearly the best player on the ground but she never made you feel as though you weren’t,” Chiera said. “I played with Daisy for five years and was a bottom five player but I never felt that. There was no hierarchy.

“She could do anything. She could play any position. She could kick off both feet. She could take contested marks. She ran all day.

“I was a defender and Daisy always had a sixth sense for when you were in trouble. When I was one-out with an opponent in the goalsquare, thinking ‘Oh no I’m stuffed here,’ she would appear out the back screaming ‘JC!’

“She read the play quicker than anyone else.”

If a highlights reel existed from back then, it would be unrivalled. But the 2017 VFL Women’s grand final gave pundits an insight into her innate ability to turn a game on its head.

Darebin had only just scraped into the decider that year against hot favourites Diamond Creek. The inaugural AFLW season had been won and done a few months prior and the players knew that it would be the last time that super team would play together.

Late in the third quarter, Diamond Creek tried to clear the ball out of defence under pressure and Pearce met it at the top of the 50. She fended off a tackler, gained 20 metres and then set sail on her left foot, giving her side a game-high 20-point lead.

The second five-peat was all but complete.

“No other player was doing that,” Chiera said.

If there was one regret, it’s that we only got to witness seven seasons of Pearce the AFLW player.

“It was a shame for the football going public that the AFLW started in 2017 because we saw Daisy when she was in her late 20s as opposed to the dominant force she was,” Chiera said. “She would have played 200 games of football before that.

“She was still really dominant in the first couple of years but once she had twins, she was playing a different position.”

When she retired after a premiership with Melbourne in 2022, it was a matter of when, not if Pearce would step into coaching.

“A few years ago when I finished at St Kilda, I went and spent some time with Daisy in Bright and we had those conversations,” Searle said. “Her knowledge of the game, ability to articulate it, her approachability and humility, all of those things lend themselves to coaching.

“I’m very proud about what they’ve all gone and done post-Darebin for women’s football and the AFLW.”

When Pearce was officially appointed West Coast’s next AFLW coach on December 11 last year, Chiera felt immense joy for the Eagles’ players who’d now be working with the biggest name in women’s football.

As the AFL Players Association’s Head of AFLW, Chiera has spent plenty of time working with the likes of Ella Roberts, Charlie Thomas and Bella Lewis.

There’s been a belief among industry figures that West Coast hasn’t taken its AFLW program seriously since entering the competition in 2020. But Pearce’s appointment was the instant injection of credibility and grandeur that West Coast’s women’s team desperately craved.

“I was happy for her but I was also happy for the players at West Coast,” Chiera said. “They have players that are incredibly talented and I knew they were getting a coach who was going to support and challenge them and create an environment where they can thrive.

“She’s got a velvet sledgehammer. She has this amazing way of telling the truth in a way that will take you forward.

“I know what she can do for people and I’m excited to see what she does with this group.”

The players can feel it too.

West Coast’s lack of success has tested their patience for years. Some, fed up, have left. A talented core chose to remain but have been let down by a lack of progress.

The arrival of Pearce was reward for loyalty.

It also made some little girls’ dreams come true.

Roxy Roux requested a trade to West Coast without knowing that Pearce was going to be coach. It was a blessing in disguise given that she would’ve had to explain the poster of the former Melbourne captain hanging on her wall at home.

“This particular poster was from back in the Exhibition Game days,” Roux said. “I don’t have her signature but it’s not too late.

“I remember her coming and talking to us at a school girls championships. She walks in the room and they said ‘Does everyone know who this is?’ And we’re like ‘Oh we absolutely know.’

“That poster on the wall says it all. She wants the best for you and the best from you.

“I’m like a sponge. I’m soaking up as much of Daisy Pearce as I can.”

Belinda Smith is one of just five remaining members of West Coast’s inaugural AFLW squad still on the list. Even a veteran can fangirl over the name most synonymous with women’s football.

The Melbourne Cup takes on a different meaning in the Smith household.

“My brother is a big Melbourne fan and we had two foals born just after the AFL grand final in 2017 so we named one Dusty and the other Daisy,” Smith said. “We’re a big footy family and the names had a nice flow.

“Literally the first thing I did when it was announced that Dais would be our coach is call my dad and ask him how Daisy the horse was going. And how should I break the news to coach Daisy that we have a horse named after her.”

Then there’s West Coast captain Emma Swanson.

The combative midfielder was seething with jealousy when the Demons broke through for their maiden AFLW premiership in 2022. And that competitive instinct bubbled up again when Pearce arrived at the club.

“I’ve played a lot of footy against her and she was always the opposition and she was always successful,” Swanson said. “Sometimes my toxic competitiveness gets the best of me.

“We did a swimming session in January. I was swimming alongside her and every time I took a breath I was like ‘I’ve got to beat her.’ I was driving home after that session and I was like ‘Nah, she’s the coach now. She’s not my opponent anymore.’

“It took me a little bit to let my guard down and realise that she’s on the same team. I didn’t need to not like her and want to beat her.”

The Daisy effect already has a firm grip on Western Australia.

West Coast’s AFLW membership is trending upwards.

A big crowd is expected to fill Mineral Resources Park on Friday night for the second leg of the league’s opening night.

Media and public interest is peaking. The only Eagle that rivals Pearce’s public profile is Harley Reid – and that’s saying something.

For the first time in the Eagles’ AFLW existence, there’s genuine optimism about what West Coast might achieve this season. And Pearce is at the heart of it.

It’s time to see whether those hours spent around a bowl of bolognese can produce Darebin’s next premiership coach.

“People who don’t know her and only see her from afar see her as a myth,” Chiera said. “They might not understand why people talk about her with such reverence.

“She’s an authentic person. She’s a smart, intelligent, capable person but she can also be very silly and cheeky. She doesn’t take herself too seriously. People warm to that.

“She’s not a queen. She’s just Daisy.”