VFL W: Penny Cula-Reid’s Collingwood takes minor premiership again
She was a trailblazing junior, a star state league player and rose to the ranks of the AFL W. Now Penny Cula-Reid is making her name in coaching circles, and she’ll call on a Magpies heavyweight for advice as she leads the women’s team into the VFL W finals.
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She’s a leading VFL W coach, but Penny Cula-Reid has slipped in the occasional game for St Kilda Sharks this year.
The Collingwood mentor calls her cameos for the Sharks reserves “my sanity and my downtime’’.
Fixture clashes brought some challenges.
Early in the season Collingwood played at Victoria Park and straight after the game she headed for Seaford, where the Sharks were playing.
It necessitated a change of clothes in the car.
It was worth it.
“I played half a game and it was great fun,’’ she said.
Cula-Reid, 31, made her start in senior football at St Kilda a few years after her and two other girls went to VCAT when they were told they had to stop playing football.
Their action prompted Football Victoria (now AFL Victoria) to create competition for youth girls.
After more than a decade of good service to the St Kilda club she was drafted by Collingwood in October, 2016, for the inaugural 2017 AFL W season.
She played two games for the Pies, a thrill for a lifelong supporter of the club.
Last year Collingwood appointed her its first VFL W coach, and the Maggies went through to the minor premiership, only to suffer a straight-sets finals exit.
Her selection as coach of the year was a crumb of consolation.
This year has brought another minor premiership, sealed in the final round when Collingwood defeated Hawthorn and Richmond saw off the Southern Saints.
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The finals start this weekend, with the Pies meeting the Saints, coached by Peta Searle.
Searle made news when she joined Gary Ayres’s coaching team at Port Melbourne, and she returned to North Port Oval on Tuesday for a press call ahead of the VFL and VFL W finals.
Cula-Reid was there too and spoke admiringly of Searle, who coached her at representative level.
“I know the type of coach she is, and what she brings is so much passion and love for the game,’’ she said.
“It’s sort of humbling knowing that I’m coming up against someone I was coached by. I’m really looking forward to the challenge and using the stuff that she taught me.’’
The Collingwood-Southern Saints match is a qualifying final and will be played at Victoria Park.
“I think it means more to me than the average Joe,’’ she said.
“When I reflect on my season last year, my most memorable moment was coaching at Vic Park for the first time. I never dreamt of playing for Collingwood, but coaching Collingwood into a finals series is a dream come true.
“I’m going to reach out to ‘Bucks’ (Pies AFL coach Nathan Buckley) and sort of say, ‘Hey mate, what’s it like coaching in a finals series, have you got anything for me?’’
Cula-Reid first coached when she was 17, guiding the Murrumbeena-St Kilda Sharks team when the youth girls competition started.
“I’ve always loved coaching and teaching girls how to play football, and it’s just evolved from there,’’ she said.
St Kilda Sharks have made the finals in the South Eastern Women’s competition — and they’ve called on their former captain to drop in to training night.
Another Sharks cameo suits rising coach Cula-Reid fine.