Saratoga Hawks GIANT Visit

The Saratoga Hawks held its inaugural Come and Try AFL day at Saratoga Oval on Saturday, 7 December. As well as some existing Saratoga girls, 15 new girls came to try AFL for the first time.

This year Saratoga had special guests Alan McConnell, AFL Women’s Coach and Director of Coaching at the GIANTS, and GIANTS AFLW players, Jacinda Barclay and Elle Bennetts, to put the kids through their paces.

Elle and Jacinda spoke to the participants about what it takes to be a professional women’s footballer. With Alan speaking about the growth of AFLW across Australia and about how Giants have recruited players from all around the country and overseas. For the 2020 season, all recruits to the Giants AFLW team (bar one) came from NSW/ACT. This is a great achievement and incentive for our local girls to realise a clear pathway for their personal football careers.

      

Elle and Jacinda took the girls through different drills and it finished off with a fun game at the end. Thank you so much to the GWS Giants for providing Elle, Jacinda and Alan for the afternoon, they were wonderful with the kids and stayed behind to take photos and have fun. We hope that many young girls have now become inspired to play AFL football next year and into the future.