Daisy Pearce got used to being The Girl™.

As part of “Bright’s Blue Boys…and Daisy” as a junior football banner so proclaimed, there was “nothing to achieve” for the Carlton fanatic who studied every stat and adorned her bedroom with ‘90s Blues posters.

To fast-forward 20 years and find herself as one of the pioneers of AFL Women’s, forging a path that the first bricks upon were laid by VWFL women before her that will endure for decades to come still remains far-fetched to Pearce.

From being forced to stop playing at age 13 due to rules at the time to now a dominant force in the game as player, media commentator, coach, icon.

AFL chairman Richard Goyder called her recently. She missed his call. Left him hanging for a week.

That it could have been something as poignant as an Australian Football Hall of Fame induction could never have dawned on her, she’s just the kid from Wandiligong, who used to kick the footy around with the boys.

“I always was ‘The Girl’ (in those teams), and that’s a crazy, cool thing to reflect on, too, with this acknowledgement is just how far it’s come just in one lifetime,” Pearce said joining “Debo” Lee who became the first woman inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 2021.

“Whilst I was lucky in terms of the support that the club wrapped around me and really encouraging and progressive parents that for every person that said I couldn’t, they encouraged me more and pushed me harder. So I’m grateful in that sense. But yeah, there were so many times I just got so used to being the (only) one, and this sense that it was always just going to be because it was for fun and for the love of the game, and there was no nothing really to achieve.

“It’s crazy to think that that was my beginning in the game, and that there were many moments along the way where it was very real. It was the reality that you would just have to stop (at under 13s). I’m so glad that I ignored all of those.”

EVERY INDUCTEE: TEARS, TRIUMPH AND AN ALL-TIME HOF SPEECH

Pearce moved to Melbourne as a teenager, rustling together a motley crew to fashion a footy game at high school with her performance catching the eye of an umpire, Narelle Kinross, who told her about the VWFL. A revelation Pearce discovered at 16 on the computers in the school laboratory in the days that followed.

She took the no. 513 bus to training at women’s football powerhouse Darebin – apologies to Diamond Creek at the time - but division three wasn’t going to cut it for the competitive young gun.

That first training session eventually led to 10 VWFL/VFLW premierships, eight years as captain, seven league medals which was eventually struck in her honour and five club best and fairests.

Whispers grew of an AFL Women’s competition, which grew louder in a function room at Marvel Stadium following an exhibition game just over 10 years ago.

The flagged 2020 start date – which Pearce concedes may have been beyond her due to her age – was brought forward to 2016.

“I was advocating for and doing whatever I could to promote the idea of women playing at the highest level, I always thought I was doing it for someone else – the next generation – not for me to play in,” she said.

This masthead stood at one of Melbourne’s early training sessions at Gosch’s Paddock where a young girl hung over the fence, enamoured, that Pearce had a ponytail “just like mine”.

The movement was on, with Pearce one of the prime movers in the drivers’ seat.

A foundation AFLW player, 55 AFLW games followed, two stints as Melbourne captain, three All-Australian nods and – her ultimate prize – a premiership in 2022 in the league’s seventh season.

Pearce’s father Daryl – her junior coach – suffered a stroke in recent years and couldn’t travel to Brisbane to witness the Demons star’s premiership triumph.

But he was front and square with Pearce’s partner Ben at Crown Palladium for this latest acknowledgement alongside her mum Dee, step-dad Joel, and influential figures including Pearce’s coach at Darebin and women’s football trailblazer Peta Searle.

It was Searle, who walked the boundary line, heavily pregnant carrying a bag of footballs with a scrunched up piece of paper with notes she’d taken at North Melbourne men’s training about what we should be doing at Darebin.

Pearce would later do the the same as she carried twins Sylvie and Roy who were born in February 2019.

“I had wanted to (return), but I didn’t have a lot of examples up close of it being possible, especially with twins,” she said.

“So I sort of just flew blind, and with the support of some amazing people at the club, just did what I could when I could … there were certainly moments where I thought, ‘gee, I’m so happy I’m going to be a mum and have a family, but will this mean that I don’t get to achieve what I want to from a football perspective?’. I’d only had two seasons in the competition … I sort of felt like I was just getting started.”

It turned out she was.

She became the first AFLW player to return to the sport after having twins, winning that premiership, making a third All-Australian team, winning a third club best and fairest and voted the game’s best captain all after their birth.

Now adding to that list of achievements, she coaches at the highest level at the helm of West Coast’s women’s team, having served in the men’s program at Geelong and being touted as a potential future men’s senior coach.

“If you’d told me back then that this would be my life, there is no way that I would have believed it,” Pearce said.

“I think why it means a lot is that the only thing I’ve ever wanted to be recognised for was for being a good footballer and for your on-field characteristics. And I think that’s the thing that for so long is missed when you’re in any women’s sport.

“It’s the thing you’re always desperate to be acknowledged for. And maybe that sometimes gets missed, is just to be acknowledged for your athleticism or your competitiveness or your ability in the game. And so I think the purity of this is for part of this to have been my actual contribution out kicking a footy.

“I think that’s probably the bit that means the most for me personally, but also excites me the most about the future and where the game’s gotten to and where it’s going.”