Moana reveals why she lost her hope in footy
AFLW star Moana Hope has opened up about losing her love for the game and reveals why she quit, saying female footy players deserve to be paid like the boys.
Fiona Byrne
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AFLW’s first star player Moana Hope says female footballers need to be paid like professionals if they are going to be treated like ones.
Hope has revealed she gave the game away when the demands of playing and her love of the game no longer matched the small financial rewards on offer.
“I had kind of lost who I was in the game of football, lost the love and lost the reason why I played. I played because I loved the game and I had lost that.
“With everything happening I was like, do I quit work and play footy or quit footy and work?
“And there was no way footy was going to pay the rent, and I was one of the highest paid female (players).”
Hope said the fledgling competition’s high visibility but low pay structure was challenging.
“You want me to perform as an elite athlete and you want to criticise me like one, so pay me to train like one,” she said.
“For me it came down to what comes first: family.”
Hope pulled the pin on her 2020 AFLW plans, opting to focus on work, starting a family with wife Isabella Carlstrom and supporting her mother-in-law, who is battling breast cancer.
Hope said she made the decision after filming the Channel 10 reality series Survivor: All Stars late last year.
“Going into Survivor I had already spoken to a couple of teams and I knew where I was going (in 2020) based on the draft,” Hope said.
“Coming out of the show, one of the first things I said to Belle was that, I don’t want to play AFLW this year.
While planning to play VFL this year, Hope is very much focused on her family’s future.
She and Carlstrom are determined to start a family as soon as possible and are undergoing IVF treatment.
“We had our first try just before Christmas and it did not work and we are trying again,” she said.
“That first experience was hard and emotional but we have gone into this second attempt much more calm and chilled.
“We will have a family no matter what. I am going to get pregnant as well, eventually.”
The couple wed in August last year, bringing their wedding forward and delaying their honeymoon because of Carlstrom’s mother’s breast cancer treatment and Hope’s Survivor commitments.
“I got married on the Saturday and flew out on the Wednesday, so Survivor was like my honeymoon, just without my honey,” Hope said.
Hope said took on the Survivor All Stars challenge as she felt she had unfinished business with the show after falling ill while competing on the 2018 season
“For me it was 100 per cent unfinished business and let’s be honest, to be invited back to play All-Stars is a bloody privilege. Who wouldn’t say yes to that?” she said.
She said she was a stronger, smarter, bigger threat this season.
“There are things you don’t want to do, you don’t want to go in with a big name and if you do you kind of want to shatter yourself real quick,” she said.
“You don’t want to be good at challenges. It is a strategic game. Strategic does not just mean let’s have a strategic conversation. If you are good at challenges, you are a challenge threat which means you are a threat to someone’s end game, which means you go home.
“So you have to play really smartly.”