Darebin Falcons champion Daisy Pearce pockets VFL Women’s best-and-fairest

HOLDING the role model tag sits just fine with Daisy Pearce.

Darebin Falcons’ Daisy Pearce won the inaugurual VFL Women’s best-and-fairest. Picture: Ellen Smith

HOLDING the role model tag sits just fine with Daisy Pearce.

Unquestionably the best women’s footballer in the country, the girl from Bright only wishes she had a female football star to look up to when she was growing up.

Daisy Pearce marks for Darebin Falcons earlier this year. Picture: Ellen Smith

“It’s just exciting for me thinking about if I was a little girl that had that role model,” Pearce said.

“I looked up to my big brother or one of his mates in his team or one of the AFL superstars. So it is special to be a role model if that means all those little girls out there can have one they can relate really to.”

The 28-year-old Darebin Falcons captain and former AFL Women’s No. 1 draft pick created more history on Monday night when she was crowned the inaugural winner of the VFL Women’s best-and-fairest award.

Pearce polled 33 votes to finish four clear of St Kilda’s Brianna Davey, while Darebin teammate Katie Brennan finished fourth with 22 votes.

“It’s just great to see where the competition’s come this year in terms of the VFL taking over the competition and putting it alongside such a quality and longstanding competition in the VFL,” Pearce said.

“You don’t imagine winning awards like this but it’s a huge honour having your name called out.”

While it may have been the midfielder’s first VFL women’s best-and-fairest, Pearce has previously won the Helen Lambert Medal as the Victorian Women’s Football League Premier Division best-and-fairest on six occasions.

“I guess you do pinch yourself,” Pearce said of her remarkable record.

“You don’t set out expecting to win one so I don’t know how it has happened but that’s the way it’s panned out.”

Continual improvement has always been Pearce’s motto and team success — which she enjoyed plenty of — has been a major driver.

Pearce has played in 12 grand finals at senior level since joining Darebin, where there are no shortage of fellow stars.

“That team success is really addictive and I’ve been surrounded by some great players and coaches at Darebin that have made that a lot easier,” Pearce said.

“I play alongside girls like Katie Brennan, Karen Paxman, Darcy Vescio, Lauren Arnell, Melissa Hickey. These girls do things on the footy field and at training week-in, week-out that literally make you stand there and feel pretty irrelevant at times. So that’s always a pretty good reminder that I can get better and how.”

A former midwife at Box Hill Hospital, Peace joined Melbourne Football Club at the start of the year in a varied fulltime role.

It is the same club she will be playing for in the inaugural of the AFL National Women’s competition next year, having been signed by the Demons as a marquee player.

“I’m really looking forward to that,” Pearce said.

“The resources at club land to date have been pretty limited so a lot of those resources and motivation for pre-season you’ve had to find yourself or with a core group of players or the few people you’ve got involved.

“So the idea of taking your own motivation down to pre-season with the experts is pretty exciting and how the competition unfolds next year is going to be pretty exciting as well.”