Lauren Arnell Q&A: How tragedy and pregnancy have helped shape Port Adelaide coach’s life perspective
Tragedy unintentionally led Lauren Arnell to Alberton. In an exclusive chat, Port’s AFLW coach reveals how her pregnancy journey has shaped her perspective on life and footy.
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Port Adelaide’s Lauren Arnell is a trailblazer as the first AFLW senior coach to be pregnant while in the role. She is due in January and looking to help break down barriers for women in sport – while trying to steer a young Power team up the ladder in the club’s second campaign.
Arnell spoke to Matt Turner about her and partner Lexi’s pregnancy journey, how it led her to Alberton, what the future holds, Port’s youngsters, playing footy with her Mum and growing up as a diehard Bulldogs supporter.
Matt Turner: What are you getting asked more about – your pregnancy or whether this is Erin Phillips’ last season?
Lauren Arnell: It’s probably an even balance of both.
MT: Do you have any idea what she’ll do after this season?
LA: The conversations Erin and I have are the same conversations as what’s being held publicly, week to week. Her focus is this season.
MT: Erin and Ange Foley are the only two players in the team with children. Have they given you any advice on what to expect?
LA: Erin’s got a 12-week-old (Londyn) who’s more than likely going to be good, little buddies with our little girl when she comes along. Only yesterday Erin and I were talking about what type of car seat I might need.
MT: How are you feeling?
LA: I’m feeling really good and I’m really grateful for the support of our people at Port Adelaide. I’ve got a really understanding group of coaches who have been behind me every step of the way, even when they didn’t know what was going on. One thing I’ve loved about the pregnancy and didn’t expect is it’s brought me closer to people because it’s a physically obvious thing that’s happening in my life that’s a conversation starter with every person I come across. We’ve also got some really special members and fans who come to trainings every week with their dogs, always asking me how it’s going and checking in. It makes me feel a really big part of Port Adelaide.
MT: Can you take us through your pregnancy journey.
LA: Going through IVF, it hasn’t been an easy process for Lexi and I. We started the process in 2020 and we’ve had some really significant challenges with it. Miscarriage is obviously a pretty heavily stigmatised topic and that’s something we’ve been through twice now, including very close to this pregnancy. What I’ve learnt from the last three years is it’s very common and is something lots of people don’t want to talk about. Most humans don’t want to burden each other with really sad stories and that’s what miscarriage is. So I think that’s why most people don’t want to talk about it because it’s really, really sad. But it’s also important for people to have a good support network and be able to talk about what they go through when it does happen. It’s been a barrier for us and a barrier for so many people.
MT: You had your 20-week scan last week. How special was that for you and Lexi?
LA: I’m 36 now and the doctors tell you to wait to celebrate until you get to 20 weeks, which bloody feels like forever. So the 20-week scan was exciting. It feels like we can breathe and it actually feels real.
MT: A miscarriage ended up leading you to join Port Adelaide, didn’t it?
LA: Very unintentionally. With the first confirmed pregnancy we had in early 2022, we lost the baby three weeks before (Power AFLW boss) Juliet Haslam called and asked me if I’d be interested in a conversation. Moving through that challenge – I don’t think you ever get over it – and how soon Juliet called without knowing that’s what we’d been going through, our mindset about whether to apply for this job or not was heavily impacted by the miscarriage. In terms of ‘you just never know what can happen’. We had all of our fertility treatment and doctor and everything set up in Brisbane, our work and life, and my Mum had just moved up there from Victoria. And we were super happy. When you find out early days that you are pregnant, you start wanting to plan and expecting certain things that will come in the next nine months and beyond. So when that’s taken away from you, it gave us really healthy perspective on life. When this (Port coaching) opportunity came up, we said ‘Lexi’s family is here in Adelaide and we can’t control anymore of this process than we already have – it’ll be what it’ll be. When opportunities like this come up in life, why not? And we’ll just do the best we can’. So we were more open to moving because of what had happened.
MT: You had a second miscarriage after coming to Adelaide.
LA: Around Easter. And this pregnancy has come pretty quickly after that. Everything does happen for a good or bad reason in life, and you’ve just got to roll with the punches. In my role, a lot of it’s footy but a lot of it’s not. While I was going through those things, I was meeting with players in their off-season and they were talking to me about the challenges of finding their own place within the team. A lot of them have moved to Adelaide to play. So guiding them through that while I had my own perspective on life hopefully helps with how I work with the young people we have.
MT: Clearly, it has given you amazing perspective.
LA: High-performance sport is a pretty stressful space to be in. There’s an expectation that whether you’re the athlete or the coach that you’re always performing at a very high level and should be successful all the time. The correlation with fertility is you can do everything you possibly can to try to make things work and it doesn’t always fall your way. I’ve had that experience as an athlete. I’ve had that experience completely separate to sport with the miscarriages and going through three years of fertility treatment to get to this point. I’ve got a really clear understanding that you can try your best at everything and do all the right things and sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t. And I think that’s healthy perspective for anything in life.
MT: At what point did you tell the club, knowing what you’d been through in the past?
LA: There were a couple of trusted individuals that knew a bit earlier than others that needed to know. I’d spent the vast majority of the men’s pre-season rolling footys, catching footys, kicking footys back to the boys for months over summer, but from April onwards I stepped out a fair bit and pretty much ghosted our men’s program. I coached the forward line of our Magpies team in the SANFL until round 5 but started to get a little bit queasy in the coaches box on long game days. At the same time our women’s pre-season was starting and the club was understanding that for regular reasons I had to put my energies into the W program and step out of the men’s side.
MT: Did anyone pick up on your pregnancy this time around before you announced it?
LA: Everyone swore to me that they had no idea. One male at the footy club in admin, from what I can tell, is the only one who picked me. I think it helped that it was winter and I could wear a couple of jackets. We found out it was a little girl around 11 weeks and we announced it around 14 weeks. I didn’t know that if you have a small torso you pop out a fair bit earlier, so I didn’t have a lot more time to hide it.
MT: How do you expect being pregnant will impact you as the season rolls on?
LA: I’m pretty bullish about it not being a barrier. I’m pretty keen to break down the barriers, particularly for women in sport and women in coaching. Whether that’s as a coach or athlete coming through the ranks and thinking about having a family, I think we should be a bit more positive in how we approach these things.
MT: What needs to happen in women’s sport more broadly to remove those barriers?
LA: It’s the old ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’, right? I’m super conscious that my body has changed so much in the past few months and am owning that because it’s only for good reasons. There’s a little human growing inside of me. So it’s trying to remove the stigma by approaching this without barriers and with great support. I do know there’s going to be points – and already has been – where I need good support around me. It doesn’t mean I can’t do my job.
MT: You’re due in January. What does 2024 look like from a coaching perspective?
LA: I’ve got the same attitude – let’s make it work. Why not? At the moment I expect to be coaching in season nine (in 2024). You never know what can happen but if you take a positive approach and have great support around you, which we do, why not?
MT: Lexi is from Adelaide so you have family here. How important has that been?
LA: To have that, as well as the extended family we have through the footy club, and other people we have close to us here in Adelaide, they’ve been so supportive and understanding. Our three-year-old niece Esme’s dad’s family have been Port members for life.
MT: Where did you and Lexi meet?
LA: Here in Adelaide. I was traded from Carlton to Brisbane in 2018 and the week before I moved to Brisbane I had a friend’s wedding in Adelaide. I came over, caught up with a few friends and Lexi was part of that social group. It took off from there. We spent the whole first 12 months doing long distance – she was here, I was in Brissy – and then she moved up.
MT: She coaches SANFLW club Glenelg. How much footy or coaching chat is there at home?
LA: The magnet boards don’t come out at the kitchen table (laughs). I think we’ve got a pretty nice balance of just supporting each other in what we do and trying to switch off from footy at home where we can, which is pretty important.
MT: You are a triplet who grew up on a cattle farm in Clarkefield, northwest of Melbourne. Your Mum, Brenda, is a hero of yours. How close are you?
LA: My attitude with all of this comes from my Mum. I don’t know how she carried three at a time. I’m more in awe of her now than I ever have been. She’s someone who’s always had the attitude that there’s not any barriers for her. If she wants to do something, she does it. And that’s had a massive impact on how I live my life.
MT: You played a game alongside her in 2019. That must have been unbelievably special.
LA: The most special part for me was I was still in contract with the Lions and during our pretty long off-season, they were happy to support me playing a Masters game with Mum. The best thing about seeing Mum out there was her teammates had real love for her and care. I don’t think anyone would’ve been within 20 or 30 years of her age. Mum was pretty close to 70 at the time. It just reminds you that footy is really about community and the people you get to experience challenges in life with and have a good time with. It makes me emotional every time I think about it. Mum never got to do it (play footy when she was young) because she was female.
MT: You’ve won 10 flags as a player with Darebin and one at Brisbane, but I’m guessing that day ranks pretty high among your favourite footy moments?
LA: Obviously a premiership is pretty high but just being able to experience that day with Mum and having teammates kicking the footy to her, seeing if she could snag a goal, was a fair bit of fun.
MT: Your great-uncle Ray Walker won a best-and-fairest with Footscray in 1963 and you grew up barracking for the Bulldogs. What are your earliest footy memories?
LA: It would’ve been early ‘90s. Did you ever have bathroom stools to reach the bathroom sink when you were a kid? We used to take ours so we could see at Whitten Oval, where there was standing only. All the beer cans and cigarette smoke, and abuse you’d have coming over the fence to the opposition and umpires were pretty clear memories. I grew up around that atmosphere, going to the footy every second week, and being passionate Bulldogs supporters. That’s certainly ingrained on my Dad’s side of the family. I’ve had some cousins who have very supportively been able to shift teams as I’ve gone through my playing and coaching career.
MT: Didn’t you have an inauspicious start at Port, pocket-dialling Kochie (Power chairman David Koch) accidentally while you were teaching?
LA: I’d been offered the (Port) job the night before and was running a cross-country carnival. I had my phone in my pocket, riding a bike around the course with Year 7 and 8 kids and it was a little bit hectic. I might have pocket-dialled him a couple of times.
MT: Captaining Carlton in the first AFLW game. Does it give you goosebumps looking back? And did you have any idea of the revolution that would follow?
LA: It’s a nice reminder each year when we get to round 1 of AFLW. I’ll never ever forget the size of the crowd and the volume, and having no idea people were locked out of the game. It was an incredible experience and even better to win it.
MT: What were your take-outs from the 30-point Showdown loss in the opening round?
LA: It was certainly nice to be up at half-time. Our people and our players will know that when we play our game style, it’s very, very good footy. The challenge is when really good teams come at us, like the Crows did in that third quarter, how are we able to respond and maintain our game style under a fair bit of pressure. There’s a lot of positives for us.
MT: Was the main message post-game about playing your way for longer?
LA: Yeah and under high pressure, which as a young group sometimes takes a bit of time to learn and manage in games like that. Round 1, nearly 9000 people at Norwood and you have that real excitement at being up at half-time on the Crows after what happened last year against them when we didn’t even kick a goal. The Crows went to another level in the third quarter so it’s guiding the young group and understanding we can continue to go back at them and be aggressive under high pressure.
MT: Coaches largely focus on the present but is it hard not to think about what your young midfield of Matilda Scholz, Abbey Dowrick and Hannah Ewings will look like in a few years, growing together?
LA: We’ve also got some really experienced older players that in time will get to know their younger teammates. We’re certainly excited about what the future holds in the short and long-term.
MT: You’ve had a lot of success as a player. Can you turn this young Port Adelaide squad into a premiership side? And how long will it take?
LA: That’s certainly what we’re working towards. We’re mindful that we’re season two of season eight in an 18-team AFLW competition.
MT: You play Brisbane at Alberton this week and didn’t get to face them last year. It is obviously a big test for your team but also on a personal note must be quite special. Former coach, premiership teammates, they allowed you to play with your mum.
LA: I’m so excited to see and catch up with those people who have been such a big part of my life. I can’t wait to give Craig (Brisbane coach Craig Starcevich) a hug, as much as that might sound a little too friendly. He’s been amazing in my life and I’ve got some incredibly close friends who are still playing there. The beauty of our friendship is we know how competitive we all are. Once that game starts, it’s game on. Hopefully we can run over the top of them with our young group.
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