Family has always been at the heart of football for Erin Phillips.

From an iconic photo hugging Hall of Fame member dad Greg after the 1992 SANFL grand final as a football-obsessed seven-year-old without her two front teeth, to a call from sister Rachel that the inaugural AFL Women’s competition might just be in the works.

It isn’t lost on Phillips that family has been at the centre of it all.

And the Hall of Fame ceremony at Crown Palladium was no different, with a swag of Phillips-es and treasured relatives in tow as Erin and Greg became the first father-daughter duo to be inducted to join Australian Football’s greatest.

Phillips, who turned 40 just weeks ago, spent her junior days playing alongside the boys at West Lakes, using a single toilet cubicle – which is still there today – as her changeroom, told at 13 that her football days were done before decades later changing the game.

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“I coach my daughter’s team at that club now, so it’s funny … at 13, your world’s just stopped,” she recalled of that 1998 hammer blow.

“Your passion – because footy was my passion – and it’s just no longer something you’re able to do. I get asked a lot, you know, looking back, how did you feel?

“To now be here, I can’t believe my life has come so full-circle.”

In 1998, Greg introduced Erin to Australian basketballer Rachael Sporn as he looked to redirect her talent and passion to basketball with the football road ending.

What could follow – two WNBA championships, a world championship gold medal and representing Australia at two Olympic Games – he could no doubt have only dreamt of.

But it was her return to Australian rules for the launch of the AFLW in 2017 that has shifted everything, literally and figuratively, for Phillips who credits her footballing great father with not ever letting her aspirations – no matter how destined for dismay they had seemed at the time – to die.

“Can you imagine having a kid who just had such a massive passion for something and someone said, ‘you can’t do it, sorry’,” Phillips said.

“And then later in life, they get the opportunity to do it. And then I think about that for my kids and go, I’d just be so proud for them.

“So much is owed to dad, and obviously mum, who was a mini-van driver, drop-off, pick-up … we’re so lucky to have really supportive parents.

“Dad brought me and my two sisters and raised us at the Port Adelaide Football Club, around footballers, and for me personally, who was just a kid obsessed with footy.

“He loved playing. He never once hesitated to teach me the skill, knowing that this will never be something you’ll need as a career. But he never, ever said no to having a kick.

“I demanded everything from him from a footy aspect, and he always gave me all his knowledge. Looking back, he knew I was never going to be a footballer like but he still taught me, and that’s something as a parent I do. No matter what my kids’ passion is, I’m going to help them with it, no matter what.”

Little could he have known what would follow.

A call from sister Rachel while in China playing basketball before the 2016 Rio Olympics flagged the possibility of AFLW, Phillips living in Dallas.

With nine-week old twins, the opportunity to play for Adelaide arose, with Port Adelaide then without an AFLW licence.

Wife Tracy didn’t hesitate, which Phillips says was a huge push, with her move back to Australia to become one of the faces of the burgeoning competition just the beginning.

“I’m just so glad I didn’t miss the boat,” Phillips said, 32 at the time the competition began.

“I’ll never forget just looking across the live fences and fences, kids sitting behind there in crows guernseys in your W colours, young girls and thinking like, I remember being on that side of the fence, but we weren’t on this side of the fence, and like the opportunities that we’re creating for them, and it was just more.

“We just knew that. I mean, we just knew it was more than just the game, how special this was going to be. And from that moment, it was more than your own personal joy and what your journey. But it was, it was going to be bigger. And it’s going to be, it’s going to be more about the journey ahead. It was really special.”

She won the first league best and fairest medal – which has had calls to be struck in her honour – and the Crows the inaugural premiership, with the star winning another league medal and another two flags before returning “home” to Port Adelaide when it gained a licence in 2022.

Her childhood dream, that just kept recurring.

“It was an unbelievably hard decision (to leave Adelaide) that just tore me up inside to leave,” she said.

“But I was having dreams … I had a dream of being at Alberton, and then a little girl squeezing my hand and saying, ‘we’re home’.

“And it was me when I was younger. It was crazy, you know, having gone through that experience and then going, you know what, if I don’t do this, if I don’t go back to Port Adelaide, and if I don’t get to an opportunity to play for this club, I will regret this for the rest of my life, so and it was almost like it just felt like the right final piece to end my footy story.”

A new chapter is written in the Hall of Fame, with Phillips joining players she “still has footy cards of” as counterparts in the annals of footballing greats, her feats on the field of physicality and finesse as great as those of her stature as a pioneer of the competition.

“I would have given anything to play one game and then to kind of have my journey play out the way it did,” she said.

“I’ll never, ever take it for granted. I don’t know who is up above, watching over me and taking care of me, but they’ve done an amazing job.”