Why Erin Phillips had to leave the Crows despite feeling more connected to the club than ever after their third AFLW premiership
Erin Phillips made history this week, becoming the first player to sign with Port Adelaide’s inaugural women’s team. Here’s how the weeks leading into her decision played out.
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April 9, 2022:
The clock had just ticked over 2pm on Saturday three weeks ago, when the final siren rang out over Adelaide Oval ordaining the Crows 2022’s AFLW premiers with a 13-point win over Melbourne.
As soon as the siren sounded, the team’s former co-captain Erin Phillips threw her face up towards the sky and raised both arms above her head.
And then, the emotions flowed. She couldn’t hold back not only her smile, but also her tears, as the realisation sank in that an incredible third premiership medal would now sit alongside those won in 2017 and 2019.
For Phillips, it was a momentous occasion, a sparkling jewel in an already heavily-jewelled sporting cap and it was no surprise how emotional she felt.
“It was really special,” Phillips told the Sunday Mail this week.
“We (Crows teammates) spoke a lot about the second premiership and how amazing it is for a club or any team to win two premierships.
“But the third is like a dynasty.
“There’s something about that number three; it sounds so much bigger than two, which is weird, because it’s only one more than two, but to be able to say that you’ve played with a club and won three premierships is something so special.
“You’ve seen it in the AFL before, with Hawthorn and Richmond … the powerhouses end up on three, it’s a number that you associate with greatness.”
But the Crows third women’s premiership was momentous for another reason too: it was the final time Phillips – the AFLW’s most decorated player to date and dual club champion – would pull on the Adelaide jumper.
April 26, 2022:
It was about 5pm on Tuesday this week when Phillips picked up her mobile and called the head of women’s footy at Port Adelaide, Juliet Haslam.
Phillips told Haslam that after weeks of sleepless nights and soul-searching, she’d decided to leave the Crows and join her expansion club as its inaugural player signing for its debut season in the AFLW.
She’d played 46 games and kicked 50 goals in Adelaide tri-colours, becoming a three-time All-Australian and two-time league best and fairest medallist.
Phillips had no reason to leave Adelaide – a club where she’d achieved phenomenal on- and off-field success – but the thing was, she had every reason to join Port, the club she grew up supporting.
Phillips is philosophical about whether that third premiership medal helped her make the decision to move on from the Crows.
“I don’t know whether (losing the grand final) would have affected (my decision),” she says.
“Honestly, I felt really torn because even after the third I felt even more close to the Crows and more ingrained and so really, it was the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my professional sporting career, because I felt that it would have been OK to stay as well.
“There was really no wrong answer, or wrong decision.
“I didn’t have a reason to leave.
“Really, the only reason was that I would have regretted not doing this, at this stage of my life and for Port Adelaide, which is a place where I grew up, was pretty much raised at.”
December 16, 2015:
Rewind almost seven years and Port Adelaide called a press conference at their Alberton headquarters.
At the “presser”, Phillips was unveiled as the Power’s inaugural – and marquee – signing for a women’s team it had committed to establish.
The signing was a match made in heaven. Phillips – a professional WNBA and Olympic basketballer at the time – had deep family connections to the club thanks to her eight-time premiership-winning father, Greg. But she’d also been a talented junior footballer for SMOSH West Lakes, forced to quit the sport she loved at 13, and turn to other sporting avenues.
This announcement was a dream come true.
At that press conference in 2015, Phillips proudly said of Port Adelaide: “This club has been my life, been the life of my family … you could cut me open, I’ve got black and white blood”.
But twists and turns meant Port never applied for a licence to join the AFLW, and Adelaide did.
Phillips was in the US for basketball when the Crows’ head of AFLW Phil Harper called her and asked whether she’d be interested in playing for Adelaide instead.
Famously, the answer was yes and great success followed both Adelaide and Phillips.
But when the AFL announced last year that all 18 AFL clubs would join the women’s league from the competition’s seventh season (expected to begin in August), suddenly the Phillips-Port Adelaide connection loomed large.
April 27, 2022:
It was 7.50am on Wednesday when the news broke: Phillips had informed the Crows that she’d played her last game.
Back in 2015, the headlines had read: “Erin Phillips unveiled as Port Adelaide’s first female player”.
It may have taken almost seven years, but the headlines still held true.
Sitting on a bench beside Alberton Oval’s boundary wearing the Power jumper this week, Phillips labelled her decision as a homecoming, and recalled sitting in the historic Fos Williams stand behind her as a child eating her nanna’s chicken soup while watching her father win his way to eight SANFL premierships in the Magpies’ black and white prison bars.
You get the sense that Phillips is happy to have her decision made, so she turn her attention to the Power’s inaugural season, which sits happily on the near horizon.
She admits the “noise” and speculation about her future in the lead up to this year’s grand final had often seemed overwhelming.
“The most important thing was the focus and energy that I put into getting that third premiership and coming back from a devastating loss to Brisbane (in the 2021 grand final),” she muses.
“That drive was what was blocking the noise.
“And it got real loud the week of grand final.
“I had to separate myself a lot, stay away from social media from anything that would try to distract me.
“But I was really so focused and so determined to win … and then we did, which was just the best.
“It was so good.”
Whatever comes next, the shine of those three medals will never dim.
Originally published as Why Erin Phillips had to leave the Crows despite feeling more connected to the club than ever after their third AFLW premiership
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