Gold Coast Suns: meet the super star players of the GC Suns AFLW team
With the opportunity to play AFL professionally only a side hustle for females, the Gold Coast Suns team members are grinding it out every day. These players will inspire you to eat, sleep, train and compete like a girl.
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Women in sport are not to be underestimated. With the opportunity to play AFL professionally still only a side hustle for females, the Gold Coast Suns team members are grinding it out every day to prove their worth as elite athletes. Star AFLW players Tiarna Hurst and Sam Virgo will inspire you to eat, sleep, train and compete like a girl.
Tiarna Ernst
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By day, Tiarna works as an obstetrician-gynaecologist at the Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital, delivering babies and taking parents through the delicate challenges of childbirth. After hours, she’s the GC Suns key defender and a force to be reckoned with.
Tiarna began playing AFL while in her last two years of study in Cairns, quickly hooked on the rush of competing and camaraderie.
“I did some track and field growing up, but I started playing footy during university,” Tiarna says.
“I was in my fifth year of studying up in Cairns and I walked out of the gym one day and there were some girls kicking a footy across the road.
“For one reason or another I went up to them and said, ‘Do you want any players for your team?’
“I was dripping in sweat and looked pretty fit at the time so they said, ‘Yeah, we’ll definitely take you’. I instantly loved the game and the adrenaline of the game.”
AFL gave Tiarna a release from studies, where the demands of medicine melted away. She says she found post-training the best time to tackle the books, when her focus was at its highest.
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“I actually felt that I could study better at med school after a good training session,” she says.
“In those days, I never thought I needed to stop playing sport. It game me an outlet.”
After graduating as a doctor, she relocated to Melbourne and was signed to the Western Bulldogs in 2017. She played three seasons with the team, including during their premiership AFLW win in 2018.
But as the story goes, AFLW was only a part-time pursuit and Tiarna needed to move again to further her career as a doctor.
“That opportunity was at the Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital,” Tiarna says.
“I got a pretty competitive job there so I had to move from Melbourne up to Brisbane.
“I started discussing with the Queensland (AFLW) clubs and the option the GC Suns gave to me was fantastic.”
Tiarna has to be incredibly efficient with her time to squeeze in the demands of her job and AFLW. Weekdays she starts at the hospital at 7.30am and works for about nine hours, with two training sessions on the Gold Coast (about a one-hour commute each way on a good day) on Monday and Tuesday night. Some mornings begin with a 5.30am gym session and in-season, Saturdays are game day.
“There’s no time to sit on the couch and watch TV. You’ve got to be really organised and prepared for what the week’s going to look like on Sunday and troubleshoot: ‘How am I going to fit all of those things in?’,” Tiarna says.
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In the cutthroat world of medicine, Tiarna continues to come up against criticism of her busy lifestyle. But she says the disapproval of others only makes her more hungry to prove she can succeed in both arenas.
“Starting work as a doctor, there were the negative comments from colleagues and my seniors and other staff in hospitals that said, ‘If you want to be a good doctor, you can’t play sport and you definitely can’t play AFL’,” Tiarna says.
“I think particularly within my specialty, being a surgeon I operate on patients and I think their concern was for the welfare of my hands and my ability to operate.
“And it is something you keep in the back of your mind but not something you actively think about.
“I’m pretty determined, pretty competitive. I could recognise it made me a better team player, better with my communication. It meant when I got to work I was really efficient at my job because I wasn’t going to slack off so I got out of work on time, and got to training, and could have an outlet where I can forget that I’m a doctor.
“When I was starting think about trying to be in the AFL women’s season, I had one very senior colleague say to me, ‘Medicine will always be there for you, you only have one opportunity to have this in your life, you need to go and pursue it to the best of your ability’.
“For him to say that, it meant a lot.”
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Tiarna says she would prefer to be a full-time athlete but at the moment there’s no opportunity for women to pursue careers in footy. With half the GC Suns AFLW team employed full time and juggling other commitments, there’s a shared bond between the women struggling and triumphing together.
“The difference we have compared to the men is we have this balance and extra things within our lives that a lot of the male players don’t have,” she says.
“There are weeks where I feel like I fail the balance. I’ve done it now for five years and that’s pretty exhausting. Particularly for the past five years the cohort of players haven’t had much of a break over that period of time, whereas the men get to go off on these amazing holidays for six to eight weeks and we’ve been training around the clock, continuing that balance.
“If you’re not passionate about it, there’s no way you could continue the balance. We may see more women push away from the game, it does get really tired.
“As a cohort of women players we’re very proud we do have these other lives, and we’re a lot more interesting than the men’s players sometimes because we’ve got a lot of diversity in our experiences and interests outside of footy, and that’s what makes us special.”
Sam Virgo
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Sam knows the thrill of being an underdog and coming out on top.
It was 1997 and Sam’s family were a tiny speck of yellow, blue and red stripes in a sea of cobalt blue. They were part of a handful of Adelaide Crows supporters during a crucial AFL game against Footscray favourites the Western Bulldogs at a packed MCG stadium in Melbourne.
“My family moved from South Australia to Melbourne and, being from South Australia, we were going for the Crows,” Sam says.
“They played in the preliminary final at the full MCG. The Crows ended up winning the game, coming from a long way back, and I just remember me and my family cheering in the crowd amongst a heap of other Western Bulldog supporters, and that was my earliest memory of really being hooked on footy.”
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It would be a number of years before she joined her local AFL club in Queensland, taking up the sport at 25 as a way to make new friends after moving interstate.
“After the first training session I just loved it,” she says.
Sam found her calling — in 2016 she was recruited by the Brisbane Lions for the AFL Women’s draft, and was awarded most valuable player a year later. She was also drafted for the 2017 All-Australian team and was appointed Lions vice-captain in 2019.
This year she joined the Gold Coast Suns as the halfback flank and was appointed co-captain of the team.
It was AFL that introduced Sam to her partner Jenna Vandyk seven years ago, who now have a toddler together called Harriet.
“We met at the football club, Jenna started playing the previous year at that particular club,” Sam says.
“We were really quite good friends for quite a while, which turned into a relationship, then nearly seven years later, we’re going strong.”
Before they’d even started dating, Sam and Jenna had discussed how they’d love to become parents one day. Being a same-sex couple the method was always going to be unconventional, but Sam knows a thing or two about being underestimated.
With Sam contracted to play AFL, Jenna decided she would carry their baby.
“It was a pretty easy decision for Jenna to carry, while I was playing professional sport,” Sam says.
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“We had two miscarriages and we fell pregnant just as I was finishing my first season (with Brisbane Lions).
“It’s always been something that we always wanted to do throughout our relationship and we were lucky enough to make it a reality. Harriet, she’s a little legend. We can’t imagine to have our lives any other way.
“Maybe one day in the future, I might take on that role (of carrying our baby) — but no hurry for me.”
Sam is the only mum on the Suns team and along with all of the demands that brings, she also works full time and plays AFLW.
“It’s really hard,” Sam admits. “People don’t understand the amount of time and energy we put into making AFL a part of our lives.
“You’ve got people who commit to the 20 hours a week we get paid for, but then there’s also the other 15 to 20 hours required to be an elite athlete.
“At least half of our team have full-time jobs, and the commitment that is required to juggle all the balls you have in the air is something that is not well understood and a big challenge for us.”
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For Sam, a tight-knit circle of women who have your back helps her manage.
“I have some really great support from my partner, but from friends and the club — we’re all able to understand our lives and other things that take us away from our football,” she says.
“You really need people around to step in to support you when you need it.
“But all of these things complement each other — I’m living my best life. I wouldn’t change a thing.
“All the girls treat Harriet like one of the family. That’s something that she’ll only know as normal, so that’s really cool. That’s exciting for me to raise Harriet as part of the Suns community.
“Footy is my favourite thing of all. From the very beginning we said the club would be the place where you could be the best version of yourself and we’re really committed to that, and we’re doing that.”
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