Crows joint vice-captain Angela Foley excited to return to her spiritual footy home: Darwin’s TIO Stadium
For Crows AFLW joint vice-captain Angela Foley, the chance to move to Adelaide has brought with it positive changes, but she’s excited to return to her “happy place” Darwin’s TIO Stadium
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Ask Angela Foley what she’d like to do before she dies and you might be surprised by her response. It’s simple, and yet, so complex. She wants to lie down in the middle of Darwin’s TIO Stadium with absolutely no one else around.
“You’ve got no idea what that oval means to me,” the Crows joint vice-captain says.
“Belinda Creer, our wellbeing coach in Darwin, does meditation and she says: ‘Go to a place where you feel relaxed’.
“And I have a vision of myself lying in the middle of TIO Stadium.
“This is what I want to do before I die, just lie down, fully relaxed and I’ve got to know that no one else is there, it’s entirely empty. It’s never going to happen, but it’s the place I always take myself to.”
TIO Stadium, inside Darwin’s sprawling Marrara sporting complex, is the ground that has seen much of Foley’s ball winning skills.
On this oval, she’s won three premierships with the Waratah Warriors in the NT Football League, captained the first ever NT Thunder women’s team, and played the sport at its highest level: in the AFLW in Crows colours.
This year, Foley has relocated to Adelaide from Darwin, a town she called home for six years. And on Saturday night she’ll be back in her old home town, ready to run out on the ground she loves, when the Crows take on their undefeated Conference A rivals, Fremantle, in a must-win game.
Born in Shepparton in 1988, how did this girl from country Victoria come to Darwin?
For that answer, you have to go back to the mid-1990s, when Foley was eight and her parents decided to pull her and her older brother Brett out of school for six months and travel around Australia in a caravan with their grandparents.
Foley doesn’t remember as much as she’d like about this trip, except for a few things: dolphins, fighting with her brother in the back seat and how much she loved the crocodiles she saw in the Top End.
So after she graduated La Trobe University as a PE/health and outdoor education teacher in 2013, she headed back north. And both her teaching career and football career blossomed. But the fact that her footy career flourished was surprising.
Foley — who grew up playing basketball, netball, athletics and soccer — didn’t play her first game of football until 2011 when a group of teaching students decided to field a women’s footy team in the Southern Uni Games.
From that “fun” team was born the Bendigo Thunder, and in two seasons the midfielder/defender won her first premiership.
“When I was growing up in Shepparton, footy was big, but not for the women’s space,” she says. “My dad (John) and my brother were right into it, supporting, playing, coaching.
“Dad’s a life member of a few of clubs there in Shep. But I just kind of watched.
“My footy career kicked off when I went to Darwin. I was lucky enough to join the Waratahs, they’d won two flags in a row before I joined and then we won the next three.”
Then the AFLW was born and Foley — who was then 26 and had spent her lifetime dreaming about becoming an elite sportsperson — had the chance she’d always wanted.
She trained with intent and focus and became one of the first priority selections for the Adelaide Football Club, through the club’s partnership with the NT.
Her father, a Richmond supporter in the AFL, couldn’t be more proud.
“He loves it, but like any father who knows anything about football, he gives me some fairly strict advice as to what I did wrong,” she says with a laugh.
The inaugural vice-captain who continues in the leadership role, made the decision to relocate to Adelaide this season to keep progressing both her teaching and footy careers, and to be closer to her Melbourne-based family including two-year-old niece Georgia.
So far this year, with three rounds of AFLW gone, Foley thinks the move has impacted her football in a positive way.
“I had a slow start to the season, I think I started with putting a fair bit of pressure on myself to perform, which I did a long time ago and all of a sudden I’ve done it again,” she says. “But I’ve settled in, last weekend I felt relaxed, a little bit in my element.”
Perhaps this is because Foley’s in a new state, with a new job, a new head coach, and renewed focus. And 2019 has been a very happy new year.
Adelaide v Fremantle
Saturday, February 23
TIO Stadium
Darwin, 9.05pm
Originally published as Crows joint vice-captain Angela Foley excited to return to her spiritual footy home: Darwin’s TIO Stadium
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