00:00:00
Speaker 1: Get everyone welcome to conversations. Now I have to preface this because a month or so ago, Leith Forrest, my former producer now fully fledged five double announcer, came back and said, I've just had lunch with Moanna Hope you have to interview, and you played footy. I didn't know a lot about it, but the more I researched, it's it's a truly amazing story. And she joins us now after a lot of messing around on my part. So Moanna, thank you so much for joining us. How are you?
00:00:29
Speaker 2: Oh good, thank you And it's a pleasure to chat to you and thank you for your kind words.
00:00:34
Speaker 1: Now I've got to say we have a suburb here in Adelaida beachside someone called Moana. He spelled exactly the same. So if I if I say Moana, you'll excuse me.
00:00:45
Speaker 3: Mawana's how you actually say my name.
00:00:47
Speaker 2: My mom is from New Zealand, so Mawana, just like the cartoon, is how you say it.
00:00:54
Speaker 1: Everyone I know called you Moana.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: I know, do you know what Before more one of the cartoon came in. That's what people used to call me. So I'm very grateful for the cartoon.
00:01:03
Speaker 3: Because now people can actually say, Mauana.
00:01:06
Speaker 1: You've got a bit of a Kiwi accent there. Do you know that? Yeah?
00:01:10
Speaker 3: I do. It's crazy.
00:01:11
Speaker 2: I've got there's fourteen of us in my family, fourteen brothers and sisters, and I'm the only one who who kind of looks Kiwi and sounds Kiwi. So I've always asked my mum who the milkman was, and she never answers my question. The rest of them just, you know, get my dad's side, which is the Elsie half German.
00:01:34
Speaker 3: So I like it.
00:01:37
Speaker 1: It's an amazing story. I can't get my head around the fact you've got thirteen brothers and sisters and there's fourteen.
00:01:44
Speaker 2: Of you there is And do you know the crazy thing, Graham is I lost my dad when I think I was twelve to cancer. And my mum after my dad passed away, she's just a saint and angel on earth, and she ended up adopting a lot of kids as well. So in our house, in our Housing Commission house, there was twenty nine of us that she was raising by herself, and she was a full time nurse who worked night shift running a whole department.
00:02:12
Speaker 3: So that woman is incredible. So fourteen is a lot. Twenty nine is just insane.
00:02:18
Speaker 1: You were like, I'd read that or heard that, and I can't go. Just fourteen kids and there was a two bedroom house. Not my dad had one bedroom and there was forget the twenty nine, there was fourteen of you had it. How on earth did how accommodated?
00:02:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the kids all had one All of us had one room, and I remember we had like four sets of bunks pushed up against each other.
00:02:44
Speaker 3: We all slept head to toe. It's all in you. So for me it was I loved it.
00:02:50
Speaker 2: I loved it because we were just crazy kids who just always created trouble. And I remember we used to have the bunks with the slats like the woodens, and to cause trouble we would remove those and when the people on the top bunks went to get in, they would just fall through and Mum would go crazy. It was the perfect way to get someone in trouble. So I loved it. Eventually, housing Commission were great. They built on and gave us an extra I think three rooms, which probably didn't cater fourteen, but still it was.
00:03:20
Speaker 3: It was fun and my mum, as I just mentioned, full time nurse.
00:03:24
Speaker 2: So she worked every night of the week, and my dad was a pizza delivery driver. So I don't know how they did it. I don't know. Especially I'm a mother of two now, so I don't know. I can't find time for myself with two kids. I don't know how they did it with fourteen of us.
00:03:39
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated. How's your mother's body? How's her health?
00:03:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you know what she's She started going through some serious health stuff around, you know, ten years ago, and that's kind of just gotten worse and worse. And I take care for my mother and so I take her to all of our specials appointments, and I don't know how she's made it this far, to be fair, with everything she's got going on pumping out fourteen kids. There is there's always, there's always Like I've had, I've birthed one kid and the effects of that on my body. So any woman that carries any child, it comes with it comes with the difficulties afterwards, and that's the reality of birthing children. So my mom is doing pretty bloody great for what she's.
00:04:27
Speaker 3: Been able to do.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: How old is she now?
00:04:30
Speaker 3: She's seventy. She is seventy.
00:04:35
Speaker 2: It's not that old, absolutely not. But when you go, it's definitely not that old. And every day is a privilege. But I think with her, she's got a lot of like she's got a lot of things that restrict her from doing a lot of things in life, Like she can't walk very far.
00:04:51
Speaker 3: You know, she's her mobility.
00:04:53
Speaker 2: Is getting less and less and everything's starting to take over. But as I said, her specialist. But just like I don't know how he's still doing it and I'm here for it. So she's pretty resilient, that woman.
00:05:05
Speaker 1: I know it's about you, but this your mother, is a fascinating story. She's she's a Kiwi from New Zealand. Yeah, what's what's her family story?
00:05:15
Speaker 3: Well that's the thing which I so love. I love it.
00:05:19
Speaker 2: So my granddad, her dad was a chief. He's passed away, but he was a chief in New Zealand, which is a pretty big deal. And anybody from New Zealand that I've met who I have no relationship with, no, my family because my family have so much respect in New Zealand and we have her a Maria in New Zealand, so heritage is huge. Like my two three year old son. He can do the haka, which is incredible. And my mom has had her own multi dancing group. And every time I go back to New Zealand, we go up north through it where she was born and raised in Auckland. But we have our place up north in Kaitaia, which is the most.
00:05:59
Speaker 3: Beautiful place to go.
00:06:02
Speaker 2: So yeah, So she born and raised New Zealand and met my dad when she was about eighteen and then moved to Australia with him.
00:06:09
Speaker 1: What was he doing there?
00:06:11
Speaker 3: He was a DJ.
00:06:11
Speaker 2: He was a reggae DJ, which is just reggae rows my mind.
00:06:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, reggae, like loves reggae music with just DJ and she met him. I don't know how.
00:06:24
Speaker 2: She doesn't really tell the stories, but yeah, she met him and they fell in love and she moved to Australia with him.
00:06:30
Speaker 1: You must get her to tell the stories.
00:06:32
Speaker 3: I have to, you know what. The more I learn, though, like the more I learn, the more I want to know.
00:06:39
Speaker 2: But she's one of those old school people that just kind of keeps it all close, super close to her heart.
00:06:44
Speaker 3: And I think, slowly but surely she'll give it to me.
00:06:48
Speaker 1: How torn are you between the two cultures, the mary culture in the Australian one.
00:06:53
Speaker 2: I love, I love New Zealand culture because every time I go there it's it's respected and celebrated in so many ways, Like you know, the harker is the biggest form of respect, and the dancing and the way you say hello, you know, even the way that we bury it or not we I didn't do it, but my mum's family buried my grandfather.
00:07:13
Speaker 3: It's all traditional.
00:07:15
Speaker 2: It's it's all it's different and it's the it's the way of life.
00:07:19
Speaker 3: And I like that. In saying that, I'm also proud to be Australian and proud that.
00:07:25
Speaker 2: We celebrate we are more now celebrating our indigenous heritage.
00:07:30
Speaker 3: So I would say I love any way that we celebrate who we are.
00:07:35
Speaker 1: Is there a more powerful opening to a sporting ceremony that than the harker?
00:07:40
Speaker 2: I don't think there is even still to this point, like I'll put it on and it gives me goosebumps.
00:07:45
Speaker 1: Can you do it? Do you do it?
00:07:47
Speaker 2: I'm women don't do We've got their own version of it. It's a it's a male thing. Women have a female version of the hakker. But the you know, when I kicked a hundred goals, my family came out onto the field and did the hacker, which was pretty which was like pretty incredible.
00:08:03
Speaker 3: That was a moment for me.
00:08:05
Speaker 2: And even when I got married, they did the full performance at my wedding, So you know, I've been on the receiving end of one and it's just it's really moving.
00:08:16
Speaker 1: When did footy end of your life?
00:08:19
Speaker 2: I first started kicking a footy when I was three, believe it or not, and my brothers played local footy. So I used to go watch and play every game and I'll just kick the I remember, you know, the edge of the square and the goal square. I used to just try and kick from the edge of square through the goals every single weekend while my brother's played until I was allowed to play. And then I started playing with local boys at the air at under tens when I was seven and loved it. I absolutely loved it. And people always say, people always ask me like, oh, I must have been hard playing with the boys. It was like some of my best memories because when I played with the guys, they didn't treat me like a girl or like a guy, just a footballer. And I loved it, and I'm still really close with some of those guys too, which was which was incredible, and I finished, had to finish. When I was playing Get This, I didn't know I wasn't going to play with the boys. Passed under twelves and I got to under twelves and I remember the club came to me and said, no, you can't play anymore. And I said, what do you mean I can't play anymore? And they said, well, their reason for me was mind blowing.
00:09:23
Speaker 3: But they were like, were.
00:09:25
Speaker 2: You going to get boobs one day? And so you can't play? And that was legitimately the reason they gave me. And they lied because I still haven't gotten boobs yet.
00:09:37
Speaker 3: They only came through when I breastfit and then they left again. So but that was the reason I was given and I couldn't believe it. So I was like, well, my brothers could keep playing.
00:09:47
Speaker 2: There was no other real explanation given the boys, you know, they were always great, and so I just stopped playing and then I played cricket as well. End up playing cricket for Victoria from a very young age up until London Nineteens. I was a very fast bowler and I remember I was playing local cricket. I think I was fourteen, thirteen forty years of age, playing local cricket, and a mom just came up to him.
00:10:11
Speaker 3: She was like, I heard you play footy and I was like yeah, and she said, well there's women at play. You can play in the women's camp. And I was like, what women played footy? This is insane.
00:10:20
Speaker 2: That was the only girl that played local footy with the boys. And so she's like, yep, come down to train. He was down at Hatfield and I went down and I was the only kid, and it was just all there was in this competition was six teams and that's it.
00:10:35
Speaker 3: So six teams. You had a B and C and everyone had sixteens and that was all there was. There was no girls teams, there was nothing. So I was allowed to play with the women. There was no rules. As a kid. The only thing was out to wear a helmet.
00:10:48
Speaker 2: So I just spent from you know, thirteen forteen, from that point, I'm playing against women wearing a helmet, and our bloody loved it. I absolutely loved it because for me, one of fourteen, all they wanted to do.
00:10:59
Speaker 3: Was beat them. I want to be the kid that.
00:11:00
Speaker 2: Beat the adult like that was like that was like, you know something that I generally enjoyed doing.
00:11:08
Speaker 1: Moana Hope is my guest, folks. It's the start of a illustrious football career back shortly, my guest on conversations today is Moana Hope. It's Moana the correct pronunciation, the Kiwi pronunciation of it. A truly amazing story. One of fourteen kids, her mom met her father and mother of Mary extraction I suppose that's the way an Ice way of saying it, and immigrated with her father to Australia. Was allowed to play footed with the boys when she was young, but when she turned thirteen or fourteen, she couldn't play anymore, but found out there was a women's competition. Have I heard a conversation that you were having and you talked about the love of the game, and it just resonated so much because I went back to when I was a kid. You know, it's about you, not about me, but it was just the sheer love of the game. You couldn't wait for Saturday to come to play. Can you just expand that a bit more for us? Well?
00:12:05
Speaker 2: I remember when I was a kid, I played with my brothers and every Sunday morning we used to get up before even sunrise, so we used to get up at like five am and would put your footy socks on, footy shorts, the whole uniform and sit in front of the heater on the floor and wait for the sun ups that would and that we would just be in our full kid like the whole morning, whole night, just everything was about footy. Go to the footy, play footy, and then stay and watch every game afterwards, just so we can keep the footy behind the goals with our mates, even with at home. Like my most prized possession was a footy. I slept with my footy because I didn't want anyone to steal it. And you know, we couldn't afford much growing out, like you know, complete transparency. There were times where we didn't even eat, so if you got a footy, that was like gold.
00:12:54
Speaker 3: And you know, anytime we.
00:12:55
Speaker 2: Can kick a footy, kick a foot in the hallway, through the doorways. We had enough to kids to almost fill a footy team. So we would play you know, three on three or four on four at the oval until after dark and we'll get in trouble for it, but it was worth it. Footy was everything like I and it still is. Like I've gone back to playing local footy this year and I.
00:13:13
Speaker 1: Just love it. Who Fo This.
00:13:17
Speaker 2: Year I've played for Abbathaudi down at Abba Faudi and we got knocked out in the second final.
00:13:22
Speaker 3: But I loved it. I just loved playing.
00:13:26
Speaker 1: The obvious question is who did you buk for when you're a kid.
00:13:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I grew up my whole life barracking for Hawthorne. I was Hawthorne supporter. I loved him.
00:13:34
Speaker 2: And the thing is though, when women when the women's comp came out and the ANFL said to all the clubs, submit your tender to have a women's team. I was told that Hawthorne's response was no thanks, we just want to focus on winning premierships, and they were winning premierships back then, and so for me, I was like, well, you don't care about women or you know the fact that women's or girls support your club. So I boycotted them because I played for colling when it went over to Collingwood and barrack for them, and so I kind of across a few different teams because I know a few of the male AFL players, and I've got so much respect for them and I'm just.
00:14:10
Speaker 3: Obsessed with it.
00:14:11
Speaker 2: I watch every men's game that happens on the weekend because i just love watching footage.
00:14:16
Speaker 3: So and I watched for.
00:14:17
Speaker 2: The players, like the incredible players that I get to watch, like Darcy from Bulldogs.
00:14:22
Speaker 3: What a freak.
00:14:23
Speaker 2: That Kid's going to be something big. You know, every club has their player that I enjoy watching. So I'm a bit obsessed with footy.
00:14:31
Speaker 1: So tell us about those you're playing women's footy. Had you've had a long career.
00:14:37
Speaker 2: With Yeah, I played local footy for years and years and years. Also played for Victoria captain Victoria. I think I was the only Victorian to ever win Player of the Championships. I've won goalkicking. I'm the only female at a VFLFL level to kick over one hundred goals in the season I played for Australia. I went to when Kevin Sheedy was coaching the men over in Island, which was cool because I got to meet Kevin Sheedy and have a chat to him and he was one of the most loveliest men i'd met. So it was just I've done some really cool things in footy and that's.
00:15:15
Speaker 3: Kind of yeah, done a lot and I've loved it all.
00:15:20
Speaker 1: So what we're doing footy wasn't professional and probably the girls even today, I probably can't make a full living from it, but you're playing it for fun. What we're doing in your personal life and your working.
00:15:32
Speaker 3: Life what I do now?
00:15:33
Speaker 2: So I actually have and I've had this business for ten years, and I've ran it for ten years, so I've ran it all the way through playing ahow. But i run my own traffic management company in Victoria, and I've got in Victoria, I've got over two hundred and fifty staff working every day. I've got an ops team made up of sixteen and i've got an office up in Queensland as well well, i've got about thirty five staff.
00:15:57
Speaker 3: So I've built that from scratch.
00:16:00
Speaker 1: And to do that, how did you do that? Just this morning I took the dog to the bench and there's a young lady dressed in high viz setting up all the traffic.
00:16:10
Speaker 3: Barricades, probably one of mine. Yeah, what's it called?
00:16:14
Speaker 1: What's your business called?
00:16:16
Speaker 3: That's the crazy thing about it.
00:16:17
Speaker 2: It's called you toility traffic management. But the crazy thing about it is when I was when I was like, you know, before my dad passed away, So like when I was maybe like ten eleven twelve, come out of the age of it was I ended up dropping out of school. I didn't go to high school because I took.
00:16:34
Speaker 3: Care of my dad.
00:16:35
Speaker 2: Like I quit to care for my dad and he had to move out of the house because it was too much for him because of his cancer was getting worse.
00:16:43
Speaker 3: He had a lakemia, and.
00:16:45
Speaker 2: So I moved out with him and I took care of him for years and I just was he basically was his nurse. I cooked for him, gave him his medicine, pushing on his wheelchair, bird bathroom, just cared for him and my mom had to keep working so she couldn't And so I didn't go.
00:16:57
Speaker 3: To high school.
00:16:58
Speaker 2: And when he died, they allowed me to finishing vcal for a couple of years, but I just went to school for footy.
00:17:03
Speaker 3: Play footy with the boys at lunchtime for sports. That was it.
00:17:08
Speaker 2: And so you know, when I go at eighteen, I got a job in traffic management. My mate got me a job in traffic management and I did that for a couple of years and about when I was about twenty. The company I worked for was the biggest company in Australia, and I was just dropping the Youdo off back to them and the manager was there and he was just by chance, was like, mo our engineer just quit. Can you come and do some adnant And I'm telling you I never used the computer, mate, And I was like, sure, why not? And so I went in there and he was like, can you open Excel?
00:17:41
Speaker 3: Two things. One I couldn't spell Excel.
00:17:44
Speaker 1: Two.
00:17:44
Speaker 3: I had no idea what he was talking about.
00:17:46
Speaker 2: But what I knew was this was an opportunity for me to have a career where I could do the things that I wanted more in the most in life, which was one, I wanted to rent my own house. I really wanted an own house where I can rent it and just be have my own independence.
00:18:05
Speaker 3: Too was I wanted to.
00:18:06
Speaker 2: Buy my dream car, which back then was a Holden Commodore. And so I thought, if I got this job, if I did really good at this admin, he might give me a job and then that could lead to full time, which could lead to me having those things I wanted the most.
00:18:21
Speaker 3: And so I just googled XL figured it.
00:18:25
Speaker 2: Out and did all the data entry, and at the end of the day he said, come back tomorrow. I went back the next day and then I kind of just wanted it so much that I downloaded the odd standards and the codes of practice, went home, read them or whatever I couldn't spell or understand, I googled it and understood the meaning of it, wrote it down, took notes, and so within three weeks I knew more about the legislation and any other member in the office. And within a year I became the manager of the engineering department. I started engineering myself and I made it the most profitable department had it ever been.
00:19:01
Speaker 3: And so I did that for about three years. But I wanted to learn more. Was such a sponge.
00:19:05
Speaker 2: I was like, I want to learn as much as I can, But there was no way I.
00:19:09
Speaker 3: Was going to grow in that office. It was me. I was the only female.
00:19:12
Speaker 2: There was about twenty men, and there was no room for growth. I was the manager of the department. I was engineering myself, but there were people below me being paid more. So I knew I needed to do probably move on to grow. So I moved to a different business in which I was an operation supervisor. I did that for a little while, learned everything, every aspect of the business, and then grew from that tool manager, learned every aspect of the business. And then somebody approached me one day and said, would you start a business for me? I did it, got it fully certified, quality, safety, environmentally, got it all of its pre colts, built it. I built it to about seventy staff and twenty five utes. And then I thought, you know, I'm doing this for everyone else, I'm working my ass off everybody else.
00:19:54
Speaker 3: Why not do it for myself? Just take a chance.
00:19:56
Speaker 2: So I met someone like a silent partner, and they wanted to do the same thing.
00:20:02
Speaker 3: So I started this business ten years ago.
00:20:04
Speaker 2: And now I've built it to over two hundred and fifty staff, and I've got about I think eighty vehicles in our fleet. And even playing AFLW, and I know I mentioned my business's name earlier. I don't ever mention my business name. Even when I played AFLW, I never said the name. I never promoted it publicly because I built it based on quality and safety. And we have your reputation in this in this state for being the best traffic management supplier company because of our position procedures, and I want it to.
00:20:35
Speaker 3: Stay that way.
00:20:35
Speaker 2: I don't want people to become engaged with it because it's mine and so it's I'm really proud of myself from where I've come from to be able to build it to where I have because it just shows that, you know, anything's kind of possible.
00:20:49
Speaker 3: Do you know what I mean?
00:20:51
Speaker 1: Wow? Well I still can't work Excel.
00:20:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it is. It is difficult.
00:21:00
Speaker 2: I just google how to do everything YouTube and I teach myself literally everything that's got.
00:21:06
Speaker 3: To do with that side, and I am the it of my business. So as possible.
00:21:11
Speaker 1: We need to take a break. Moana Hope is my guest. Folks back shortly, Welcome back everybody. If you just tuned in, it's an amazing discussion. Leith Forrest warned me. He said, you must speak to Moana Hope. It's an amazing story and it truly is. One of fourteen kids loved footy, played footy aff We haven't got to the AFLW yet, but just you just tuned in. Just before we went to the break, I talked about how she established her own business and if you didn't hear it, you'll have to get there. Go back, go back and listen, because it is truly amazing story. You mentioned the car you wanted to buy. I'm intrigued about the car. Your dad had, the Falcon station wagon and you had to fit fourteen kids in it. Tell me you didn't drive around with fourteen kids in the Falcon station work I'm not.
00:22:00
Speaker 3: I'm not going to lie to you. We absolutely did.
00:22:02
Speaker 2: I remember as a kid he used to put us all on the boot and we just laid it lay down. We had the big boots, so we would all lay down and sometimes at lights would pop our heads up. But back then it was quite normal to have like two kids in one seat ount like people did that. I remember we got pulled over by the police once and I think you just got to find but we could still.
00:22:22
Speaker 3: Drive away with five kids in the.
00:22:24
Speaker 2: Boot when like the yes, we had, yeah, the old school station wagon with the big boot, and so you know, as kids, you could just lay down, and then we did. We just laid stude by side, like four or five of us and in the back seat there was like probably two per seat out and one kid on the lap or on the floor, which which I think about it now as an adult it's the most dangerous thing in the world.
00:22:50
Speaker 3: But that's what he did. That's just the way we got around.
00:22:55
Speaker 2: I think we even drove us to Queensland like that once, which was crazy interesting.
00:22:59
Speaker 1: And a part of your life is the care you care for one of your sisters. Yeah, Vinnie is can you describe her condition? And yeah, Vinie and your role in her life.
00:23:11
Speaker 3: Of course.
00:23:12
Speaker 2: Lavinia was born with an intellectual disability. So she was born with something called Mebia syndrome and when she was born, she was the second person in the world ever born with it, and she had the most incredible specialist from the Royal Children, who had to fly to America to study the other person who had this visibility and then come back. And basically she was born as a vegetable and they didn't think she was going to live. They said to him, look, she won't live that long. That's just what it's going to be. And then the longer they she lived, they were like, oh, okay, we need to try and figure this out, and so they created like these special bikes that would make her body move and stuff like that. But basically, now as an adult, to give you an insight at who she is, she's thirty two years of age, but she has them. Her specialists explain this to me the development and mental capacity of a small child. So right now she's probably around twelve thirteen years of age in terms of the way that she's learning and growing, and she still needs twenty four to seven care. You know, it took me five years, maybe four or five years to teach her how to dress herself, a year and a bit to teach how to brush her teeth. So with someone like her, you can't just go this is how you put your top on off, you go like it's repetitive, and it's got to be repetitive until until her brain, until her brain can remember.
00:24:38
Speaker 3: It, till it can be like a process for her.
00:24:41
Speaker 2: So sometimes it takes months and sometimes it takes years. In saying that she is quite, she's quite literally my best friend, and even though she has the title of disabled, she's the most normal person I know because for her, you know, for us, for as humans as we've sold this big picture, you know, to be to be fulfilled, to have something in life, you've got.
00:25:06
Speaker 3: To have the big house.
00:25:07
Speaker 2: You've got to have the most expensive car, you've got to have the biggest income. You know, for her, she just wants the think she needs in life. She never looks outside of that. And so she's like, you know, I've proved this. I've been in rooms with super rich people, and I've said, go offer her three things, and I know what she'll asks for, because if you offer it to anyone else, I'll probably say, give me the big house, I'll take the range robe, and I'll take a trip around the world.
00:25:31
Speaker 3: That's what you ask for, because why not.
00:25:33
Speaker 2: She likes for ten dollars phone credit, a new charger for her phone, and a wallpark for it to plug into, because that's all she needs. She has a roof over her head, she has food on her plate, and she doesn't need more than that.
00:25:46
Speaker 3: And so for me, she doesn't.
00:25:48
Speaker 2: Get lost in the way that society tells you have to be.
00:25:53
Speaker 3: And she gives me as much banter as I give her.
00:25:57
Speaker 2: And she loves footy as much as I love footy, like she's obsessed with footy as well.
00:26:02
Speaker 3: So she's pretty incredible.
00:26:03
Speaker 2: And I'll take care of her for the rest of her life and I have for the last ten years. She's lived with me for ten years.
00:26:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's Vinnie.
00:26:11
Speaker 1: Who does she work for.
00:26:13
Speaker 3: The funny thing about Vinnie is she breaks for the pies, right.
00:26:16
Speaker 2: But the one thing I love about her, which is so funny, I'm like, I love that she does this because it makes me laugh the most. But say she's watching the dogs versus the lions, right, and she'll go, I'm barracking for the dogs. The dogs are going to win, and I'll say the lines, so she'll give me some shit.
00:26:32
Speaker 3: She'll be like, oh, stuff you and the lines.
00:26:34
Speaker 2: Get to the end of the game, the Lions win and I'll be like, who wants She goes lines, That's who I was barracking for, and she'll take off like a dog scarff and put her lion scarff on.
00:26:44
Speaker 3: So she's like a chameleon who ever wins. But she just loves footy. She just loves watching it as much as I do. She'll call me and be like, have you seen the school?
00:26:52
Speaker 1: How do you fit it all in? How do you fit it all in? You're talking about your business, you're talking about your kids, you're talking about your sister.
00:26:58
Speaker 3: Do you know what I need?
00:26:59
Speaker 2: I need a really good coffee sponsor, because that's how I fit it all in, Like good coffee, like.
00:27:04
Speaker 3: A really good too many coffee is probably good for it. The thing is the things I do. I love my job.
00:27:12
Speaker 2: I love because and the reason why I love my job, and this is being completely honest.
00:27:16
Speaker 3: I look at of the two.
00:27:18
Speaker 2: Hundred and fifty people every week, I'll look at how many of those work thirty eight hours before I.
00:27:23
Speaker 3: Look at a profit and lost statement.
00:27:24
Speaker 2: Because for me, it's more important for me that I'm able to help hundred and fifty to two hundred fifty people put food on a table and pay their rent. More important to me than making a profit. That is the most important thing to me. And that's why I love my job. You know, I take care of my sister because I love her. Why wouldn't I take care of the people that I love? And I do all those things because for me, ultimately, I want my kids to have.
00:27:46
Speaker 3: The best life like I grew up, not eating.
00:27:49
Speaker 2: I grew up and I haven't spoken about this yet, but I grew up with a lot of domestic violence in my house, which is probably the negative side of it all. And so for me, I want my kids to grow up seeing nothing, but I don't want them to ever see struggle and I also want them to feel the love like I want them to be loved, and I want them to be cared for. And you know, me working as hard as I work in me doing the things I do, is so that I can provide for everybody they care for, and that brings me joy.
00:28:18
Speaker 1: Is it hard for you to talk about domestic violence? So did you witness to me near that sort of impacts and surely on your relationship with your father?
00:28:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not hard, you know.
00:28:29
Speaker 2: You know, I went my whole life thinking that what I went through as a child was normal.
00:28:35
Speaker 3: I did. I went my whole life man.
00:28:36
Speaker 2: And my ex wife, I sat down with her, like, you know, ten months after I met her, and I was telling her about my childhood.
00:28:43
Speaker 3: But I was telling her like I'm talking to you, like I was just you know, this is my life, you know, and this is what happened to me. And I was so fine with it.
00:28:50
Speaker 2: And she sat me down afterwards and she goes, MO, I just need you to know that that is not normal, and I.
00:28:56
Speaker 3: Was like, yes, it is. Every kid surely every kid got beaten every day, Like no, they don't, that doesn't happen. And I was like, nah, that's not true.
00:29:06
Speaker 2: And when she said that, I thought, maybe I'll start talking to a therapist because maybe it's something I need to work through. And I've been seeing that same therapist since twenty twenty and it's probably the best investment I've ever made in myself because it's allowed me to process everything. And so when I talk about it, I've dealt with it. I'm at peace with it. I've been through all the stages of hating him and being mad at him and being reseentful of him, and I've gone through it, and I'm through it, and I understand that. You know, I can unlearn those things, and I can unlearn that way of living, and I can make sure that my kids and I am never that way ever, and so I'm at peace with that. I also know it's not right, and in no way, shape or form, there's violence need to be brought in on a child to make them do something or to see that they've done something right or wrong. And because I I am a child of the Mexic advance. And now I'm not saying I might have got slapped here and there, I'm saying that almost every day of.
00:30:07
Speaker 3: My life as a child, I was beaten.
00:30:10
Speaker 2: I was broken bones, I had bruises across my back, across my legs every day.
00:30:15
Speaker 3: And this is why I have so much time and.
00:30:17
Speaker 2: Respect and love for teachers, because when I went to primary school, primary school was the first time I could go somewhere I could feel safe for six hours. So for me, that's why I'm also I'm an advocate for you know, making sure that you know domestic violence.
00:30:34
Speaker 3: You know there's no place for it.
00:30:36
Speaker 2: There really isn't a place for it, and more needs to be done and people need to protect it.
00:30:40
Speaker 3: I know it's both.
00:30:40
Speaker 2: Ways, women and men, So we just need to make sure that's you know, that's what we.
00:30:47
Speaker 3: Do more in that space.
00:30:48
Speaker 1: And that's why you cared for him and he was dying.
00:30:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did because I loved him.
00:30:54
Speaker 2: I did love him, and I cared for him.
00:30:57
Speaker 3: And that was the only time he couldn't beat us because you had no strength left. He was done.
00:31:01
Speaker 2: He went from one hundred and forty kilo man, but he wasn't like, he wasn't obese.
00:31:05
Speaker 3: He was just huge. He was he could be in a rugby player.
00:31:08
Speaker 2: One hundred and forty kilo man down to probably forty I could see the bones down his back, and I could see every every boney ever had, So he couldn't he didn't have the strength to hit us.
00:31:18
Speaker 3: He couldn't get out of bed. So you know, caring for him was just because I loved him. And also I.
00:31:22
Speaker 2: Grew up believing that that was normal, so it was like, yeah, you know, all of it was normal.
00:31:28
Speaker 3: I loved him, that was it.
00:31:30
Speaker 1: Mona Hope is my guest. Folks, we need to take a break. We haven't when only finished. We haven't got to afl W yet. Thank shortly. Well, I guess on conversations today is Moana Hope afl W footy star, But we haven't got to that yet. Grew up as one of fourteen kids, played footy because she loved it, played in the what would you call it, like the state league I suppose from that yeah, VFL level, And you played for her Security Sharks. Yeah, and you had a couple of pretty good years. You kicked one hundred goals one year.
00:32:05
Speaker 3: One hundred and five. That was incredible. That was a great year.
00:32:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, and then it's almost as though you were just just born a little bit too early because AFLW came along and you were an obvious star in the Premier League. Tell us about the you know those first couple of years of AFL W.
00:32:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:32:29
Speaker 2: I remember when It's Bloody came out. I couldn't believe it, and I remember when Gil wanted to bring it forward. It was like the best news of my life because I always just thought playing against the Men. And then when I was selected as marquee for Collingwood, which was surreal. Remember getting the phone call on my couch and the first person I wanted to tell was my mom, so I.
00:32:47
Speaker 3: Drove there and told her, and it was just cool.
00:32:49
Speaker 2: I didn't tell any of my brothers and sisters because they wanted it to be like a press release thing, and I wanted it to be a surprise. And I also wanted to stick it up them a little bit because I was assisted at playday found they never got to.
00:33:02
Speaker 3: So it was really cool.
00:33:03
Speaker 2: It was just like the most insane moment. And when it all got announced. I remember all my brothers and sisters. I had all these miss calls, and when I finally got off stage, I called them and all they wanted to know was do they get free tickets.
00:33:16
Speaker 3: To the Men's ans. They just wanted all the freebies, Matt, Do I get a free jumper? Do I get free tickets? Do I get to meet Bucks?
00:33:26
Speaker 2: You know, it was all those questions, which was pretty hilarious, but it was it was surreal.
00:33:30
Speaker 3: It was insane. I remember round one, it was the whole stadium was sold out. It was packed. They had to close the doors, couldn't let anyone else in. People were jumping the fences.
00:33:40
Speaker 1: True, Still that was the Princess Park.
00:33:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, Cats Collingwood. Yeah.
00:33:46
Speaker 2: And I remember because they had shut the gates to people climbing the gates. I heard about that after the game and I and end up calling my mom after the game and she was like, yeah, those people who climbed the gates were your brothers and sisters.
00:33:57
Speaker 1: So tell us about those first couple of years. I mean it was tough. I mean, you've kicked I had it all here written down.
00:34:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll tell you. Like I it was hot.
00:34:11
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:34:11
Speaker 2: I playing local footy and just playing paying to be there, loving it to playing a foul was.
00:34:18
Speaker 3: A huge, huge shift.
00:34:20
Speaker 2: And you know I mentioned earlier, I'm playing local footy this year. I've kicked like sixty eight goals in thirteen games, and I had a great midfield and it wasn't over coached. So the first few years of afl W playing, I didn't play anywhere near what I'm capable of. I didn't I play like compared to what I play now, it was terrible, and it was terrible for lots of different reasons. You know, I think, I definitely think genuinely it was over coached, you know, like I feel like instead of just you know, they tried to be too fancy, instead of just let the girls play footy, get the footy forward, double teaming, like I've got double teams almost every game, and I just couldn't get the ball. And even when I did, my mental health was declining playing AFLW, and so I just didn't feel like I.
00:35:03
Speaker 3: Could play footy they way I wanted to, like on instinct.
00:35:07
Speaker 2: And so even though every year I played, I won the goalkicking for that club and I was always second in goal of sists as well, I still didn't play anywhere near what I'm capable of, and that was the hardest thing.
00:35:21
Speaker 3: And so for me it was like, what am I going to play next year?
00:35:24
Speaker 2: And it was that decision to play was because I wanted to make sure that I did everything I could to help build the league.
00:35:31
Speaker 3: And it became about building a league because one day, because.
00:35:33
Speaker 2: I hadn't had kids at this point, I thought to myself, one day, if I have a child and she's a girl, and she chooses to play footy, I want her to have the ability and write that by the time she's eighteen, they paid as equal athletes and she has the same ability as she would have had a son. And also, you know, for the little girls that are playing right now, for them to be able to see it to play it.
00:35:54
Speaker 3: One day, so I showed up to play for the future of the.
00:35:59
Speaker 2: Game because I knew I just couldn't play the way I wanted to play, Like I would leave training, sit in my car and cry just because I just it was just mentally, it just got the better of me going from local to AFL, and I learnt quickly, well not quick enough, that AFL's a business and local foody is fun and so you know, I couldn't adjust or you know, mentally, just it was hard on me.
00:36:25
Speaker 1: Was that because you're a forward and you depend so much on the supply, and Alim really somewhat Daisy Peers integrated really well because she's a midfielder.
00:36:33
Speaker 2: And yeah, easily one of the best. Like I played with Daisy Piers at Durbin for five years and she's easily the best midfield I've ever played with because she's incredible. No, there's no good forward without a great midfield. Like you talk about Darcy earlier. Darcy ain't getting that ball if Bulldogs didn't have a good midfield, let me tell you. And so, no, no forward can perform like even you know Linch at Richmond, he can't perform what midfield has he got kicking to him. So and that's not saying that midfield is a crap. I'm saying you've got to have a good tight unit.
00:37:03
Speaker 3: To get supply.
00:37:05
Speaker 2: So yeah, I didn't have the supply that I wanted, and then I was critiqued. I was critiqued as if I was supposed to kick a hundred goals in seven games and everything somehow was my fault, whether that was internally from the coaches or externally from the media.
00:37:21
Speaker 3: And it was just really difficult.
00:37:23
Speaker 1: I've never known you to being criticized. I just observed, I thought, you know, your best times were in playing Premier League and maybe AFL came a little bit late for you.
00:37:34
Speaker 2: Let me tell you there was one the criticism was like things like the criticism from the media was so bad that Gil mcgloughan sent me a text to check on me, Like it was like, I've seen that article.
00:37:45
Speaker 3: I just want to make sure you're okay.
00:37:47
Speaker 1: Lovely who write that?
00:37:51
Speaker 3: Do you know? The funny thing is I never looked. I stopped looking.
00:37:53
Speaker 2: And I remember because season two, week two, I remember my mum called me and she was like, have you seen this the newspaper?
00:38:01
Speaker 3: And I was like, Nah, I haven't.
00:38:03
Speaker 2: She's like, go get it, and I thought, finally they wrote something nice about me.
00:38:07
Speaker 3: I went down to go get it.
00:38:08
Speaker 2: My mom called me again and she had my whole family, like all my brothers and sisters there with her, and she had an allowed to peek speak and she's.
00:38:14
Speaker 3: Like, have you seen it yet? And I just got it and the back page is like hopeless.
00:38:19
Speaker 2: And that photo of me and my mom and this is the other part that really got me, and my mom goes, I found the guy who wrote it, and I looked him up on Facebook or do you want me to send him? And I was like, don't blood he send me imagine tomorrow's headlines, But I don't remember the people that said it, and I understand thinks something most things is like that as a written for clickbait, and so I had to just switch off to all of that, and you know, you know it was.
00:38:46
Speaker 3: That was the hard part. That was the really hard part was I.
00:38:49
Speaker 2: Couldn't do anything right, and you know, I always had to read and I was always man, I've got death threats from people, multiple death threats.
00:38:58
Speaker 3: I had to get the plice involved multiple times.
00:39:01
Speaker 2: I would be in the shopping center with Vinie, my special needs system. People would abuse me because I wasn't playing great footy. So it was it wasn't bloody easy.
00:39:11
Speaker 1: Had you had a very distinctive look though? Did that make it more like it was?
00:39:17
Speaker 2: I was abused a lot from I was abused a lot online from mostly men because I'm because I am gay, And a lot of the things that they would say would be around the fact that I'm gay and all playing their game, like you know, they would say, it's a man's game.
00:39:35
Speaker 3: Women don't belong here. So they were the two biggest things that people used to say to me all the time, and I copped it. Every single day.
00:39:43
Speaker 2: People would write and send me the most horrific things you could possibly think of.
00:39:47
Speaker 1: I find that really hard to believe. And we're talking, this is your charisma just emanates from from the screen. There's no doubt about that. I can't imagine why people would be critical about that, but that we're talking one on one. So how did that result? How did you come to terms for the door? Did you move on from it?
00:40:07
Speaker 3: Yeah? There was this, you know what, one thing.
00:40:10
Speaker 2: Two things that made me not worry about that stuff anymore. One is this one time I got this just real quick story. I know we're pushing to the end, but I got this message from a mum on Facebook and she was just like, thank you so much for replying to my daughter on Instagram.
00:40:24
Speaker 3: It's like, it's so fine.
00:40:25
Speaker 2: I tried to reply to all kids because kids are our future, right and I was like, no, it's so fun, all good, I reply to all kids.
00:40:32
Speaker 3: I hope she's Welsh.
00:40:33
Speaker 2: And the mom wrote back and she said this incredible message and she said.
00:40:36
Speaker 3: No, you don't understand.
00:40:37
Speaker 2: So my daughter, I've been sitting outside of her room for the last two weeks because she's been on suicide, what she tried to take her life. She hasn't left her room, she hasn't eaten. And the reason why is because she goes to school. Because she doesn't look like the other girl, she's bullied heavily, and because she's into sports, she's bullied heavily. She found you from AFLW. She watched your stuff on YouTube, and now she's finally.
00:41:01
Speaker 3: Leaving her room. And so for me, it was.
00:41:05
Speaker 2: Like that impact we can have on kids, both boys and girls in a positive way is super important. And the other thing was there was one of those death threats that I got, which was so bad. This death breat was so bad. It was a photo of Vinnie and it's quite graphic, has a shotgun to her head and there was blood everywhere, and the message was I'm going to do I'm going to come to your house and do this to Vinnie tonight.
00:41:30
Speaker 3: And so I was so scared.
00:41:32
Speaker 2: I went to stretch the police station. Police were incredible. They looked up the IP address, they found it and they called me back about two weeks later and they said to me, we found the person who did it. And I was shitoting myself. I couldn't sleep at night. I was so worried something was going to happen. I'd had stalkers find my house in the past, and so I literally just went to wait for that call. Got that call and the police said, look, we found the person who wrote it. And the thing is, this person lives out in the country and it's a twelve fourteen year old kid who have autism.
00:42:10
Speaker 3: And this kid was given up.
00:42:12
Speaker 2: As a baby from their family and they've moved from home to home and nobody's wanted them.
00:42:16
Speaker 3: And their problem is they see Vinnie and how I loved.
00:42:18
Speaker 2: Vinnie is and they wonder why they can't have that. And so he was like, what do you want me to do about it? And I said, just hug that kid, get someone to hug that kid, Get that kid some support and some help. That's all I care about, you know, because it clearly that's you know, they just need that. And so for me, when I look at those things and I think, you just don't know who's behind those comments, you don't know who's behind those messages. You have to just you know, you have to put on like you know, horse blinkers to it and.
00:42:45
Speaker 3: Just keep moving forward. Because the most important thing is your self awareness and the people around you.
00:42:50
Speaker 2: That's kind of what I focused on rather than what people were telling me I am or what I need to be.
00:42:56
Speaker 1: But we're running out of time. But I mean, I felt footy finished a three years for you, and obviously you talked about it. You didn't come away from it satisfied. But you're playing again because you love the game. You've done all sorts of other things You've been in, you know, reality TV shows. How's life been since footy finished for you?
00:43:15
Speaker 3: It's crazy, It's good.
00:43:16
Speaker 2: I love it. I love doing you know what I do. I do it, you know I love I loved doing the media side of stuff I enjoy. I've done some radio, I do a lot of appearances.
00:43:27
Speaker 3: It's great.
00:43:28
Speaker 2: I now that my kids are old enough now because I got two kids, I made that decision to go back to footy. So I'm thinking about it going back to footy next year in either a coaching capacity or intermedia capacity, because I just miss it and I love it. And you know, for me, it's just kind of like I stopped playing because it was too much my mental health and also I wasn't earning a lot enough to be able to do it, and now I'm ready to go back.
00:43:58
Speaker 1: No, we have and done your justice, because there's so much more left to talk about. But I think this is your journey is just beginning. It's as much as all the things you've done that it's been a delight talking to you. As I said, your charisma just radiates through the screen. So look, thank you so much, Thanks so much for sharing your story, and good luck going forward.
00:44:19
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much. And Happy Father's Day for yesterday as well.
00:44:23
Speaker 1: Thank you. It was an interesting day. I got five kids from all around the place. That was good one. I hope it was my guest folks, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Get everyone welcome to conversations. Now I have to preface this because a month or so ago, Leith Forrest, my former producer now fully fledged five double announcer, came back and said, I've just had lunch with Moanna Hope you have to interview, and you played footy. I didn't know a lot about it, but the more I researched, it's it's a truly amazing story. And she joins us now after a lot of messing around on my part. So Moanna, thank you so much for joining us. How are you?
00:00:29
Speaker 2: Oh good, thank you And it's a pleasure to chat to you and thank you for your kind words.
00:00:34
Speaker 1: Now I've got to say we have a suburb here in Adelaida beachside someone called Moana. He spelled exactly the same. So if I if I say Moana, you'll excuse me.
00:00:45
Speaker 3: Mawana's how you actually say my name.
00:00:47
Speaker 2: My mom is from New Zealand, so Mawana, just like the cartoon, is how you say it.
00:00:54
Speaker 1: Everyone I know called you Moana.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: I know, do you know what Before more one of the cartoon came in. That's what people used to call me. So I'm very grateful for the cartoon.
00:01:03
Speaker 3: Because now people can actually say, Mauana.
00:01:06
Speaker 1: You've got a bit of a Kiwi accent there. Do you know that? Yeah?
00:01:10
Speaker 3: I do. It's crazy.
00:01:11
Speaker 2: I've got there's fourteen of us in my family, fourteen brothers and sisters, and I'm the only one who who kind of looks Kiwi and sounds Kiwi. So I've always asked my mum who the milkman was, and she never answers my question. The rest of them just, you know, get my dad's side, which is the Elsie half German.
00:01:34
Speaker 3: So I like it.
00:01:37
Speaker 1: It's an amazing story. I can't get my head around the fact you've got thirteen brothers and sisters and there's fourteen.
00:01:44
Speaker 2: Of you there is And do you know the crazy thing, Graham is I lost my dad when I think I was twelve to cancer. And my mum after my dad passed away, she's just a saint and angel on earth, and she ended up adopting a lot of kids as well. So in our house, in our Housing Commission house, there was twenty nine of us that she was raising by herself, and she was a full time nurse who worked night shift running a whole department.
00:02:12
Speaker 3: So that woman is incredible. So fourteen is a lot. Twenty nine is just insane.
00:02:18
Speaker 1: You were like, I'd read that or heard that, and I can't go. Just fourteen kids and there was a two bedroom house. Not my dad had one bedroom and there was forget the twenty nine, there was fourteen of you had it. How on earth did how accommodated?
00:02:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the kids all had one All of us had one room, and I remember we had like four sets of bunks pushed up against each other.
00:02:44
Speaker 3: We all slept head to toe. It's all in you. So for me it was I loved it.
00:02:50
Speaker 2: I loved it because we were just crazy kids who just always created trouble. And I remember we used to have the bunks with the slats like the woodens, and to cause trouble we would remove those and when the people on the top bunks went to get in, they would just fall through and Mum would go crazy. It was the perfect way to get someone in trouble. So I loved it. Eventually, housing Commission were great. They built on and gave us an extra I think three rooms, which probably didn't cater fourteen, but still it was.
00:03:20
Speaker 3: It was fun and my mum, as I just mentioned, full time nurse.
00:03:24
Speaker 2: So she worked every night of the week, and my dad was a pizza delivery driver. So I don't know how they did it. I don't know. Especially I'm a mother of two now, so I don't know. I can't find time for myself with two kids. I don't know how they did it with fourteen of us.
00:03:39
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated. How's your mother's body? How's her health?
00:03:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you know what she's She started going through some serious health stuff around, you know, ten years ago, and that's kind of just gotten worse and worse. And I take care for my mother and so I take her to all of our specials appointments, and I don't know how she's made it this far, to be fair, with everything she's got going on pumping out fourteen kids. There is there's always, there's always Like I've had, I've birthed one kid and the effects of that on my body. So any woman that carries any child, it comes with it comes with the difficulties afterwards, and that's the reality of birthing children. So my mom is doing pretty bloody great for what she's.
00:04:27
Speaker 3: Been able to do.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: How old is she now?
00:04:30
Speaker 3: She's seventy. She is seventy.
00:04:35
Speaker 2: It's not that old, absolutely not. But when you go, it's definitely not that old. And every day is a privilege. But I think with her, she's got a lot of like she's got a lot of things that restrict her from doing a lot of things in life, Like she can't walk very far.
00:04:51
Speaker 3: You know, she's her mobility.
00:04:53
Speaker 2: Is getting less and less and everything's starting to take over. But as I said, her specialist. But just like I don't know how he's still doing it and I'm here for it. So she's pretty resilient, that woman.
00:05:05
Speaker 1: I know it's about you, but this your mother, is a fascinating story. She's she's a Kiwi from New Zealand. Yeah, what's what's her family story?
00:05:15
Speaker 3: Well that's the thing which I so love. I love it.
00:05:19
Speaker 2: So my granddad, her dad was a chief. He's passed away, but he was a chief in New Zealand, which is a pretty big deal. And anybody from New Zealand that I've met who I have no relationship with, no, my family because my family have so much respect in New Zealand and we have her a Maria in New Zealand, so heritage is huge. Like my two three year old son. He can do the haka, which is incredible. And my mom has had her own multi dancing group. And every time I go back to New Zealand, we go up north through it where she was born and raised in Auckland. But we have our place up north in Kaitaia, which is the most.
00:05:59
Speaker 3: Beautiful place to go.
00:06:02
Speaker 2: So yeah, So she born and raised New Zealand and met my dad when she was about eighteen and then moved to Australia with him.
00:06:09
Speaker 1: What was he doing there?
00:06:11
Speaker 3: He was a DJ.
00:06:11
Speaker 2: He was a reggae DJ, which is just reggae rows my mind.
00:06:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, reggae, like loves reggae music with just DJ and she met him. I don't know how.
00:06:24
Speaker 2: She doesn't really tell the stories, but yeah, she met him and they fell in love and she moved to Australia with him.
00:06:30
Speaker 1: You must get her to tell the stories.
00:06:32
Speaker 3: I have to, you know what. The more I learn, though, like the more I learn, the more I want to know.
00:06:39
Speaker 2: But she's one of those old school people that just kind of keeps it all close, super close to her heart.
00:06:44
Speaker 3: And I think, slowly but surely she'll give it to me.
00:06:48
Speaker 1: How torn are you between the two cultures, the mary culture in the Australian one.
00:06:53
Speaker 2: I love, I love New Zealand culture because every time I go there it's it's respected and celebrated in so many ways, Like you know, the harker is the biggest form of respect, and the dancing and the way you say hello, you know, even the way that we bury it or not we I didn't do it, but my mum's family buried my grandfather.
00:07:13
Speaker 3: It's all traditional.
00:07:15
Speaker 2: It's it's all it's different and it's the it's the way of life.
00:07:19
Speaker 3: And I like that. In saying that, I'm also proud to be Australian and proud that.
00:07:25
Speaker 2: We celebrate we are more now celebrating our indigenous heritage.
00:07:30
Speaker 3: So I would say I love any way that we celebrate who we are.
00:07:35
Speaker 1: Is there a more powerful opening to a sporting ceremony that than the harker?
00:07:40
Speaker 2: I don't think there is even still to this point, like I'll put it on and it gives me goosebumps.
00:07:45
Speaker 1: Can you do it? Do you do it?
00:07:47
Speaker 2: I'm women don't do We've got their own version of it. It's a it's a male thing. Women have a female version of the hakker. But the you know, when I kicked a hundred goals, my family came out onto the field and did the hacker, which was pretty which was like pretty incredible.
00:08:03
Speaker 3: That was a moment for me.
00:08:05
Speaker 2: And even when I got married, they did the full performance at my wedding, So you know, I've been on the receiving end of one and it's just it's really moving.
00:08:16
Speaker 1: When did footy end of your life?
00:08:19
Speaker 2: I first started kicking a footy when I was three, believe it or not, and my brothers played local footy. So I used to go watch and play every game and I'll just kick the I remember, you know, the edge of the square and the goal square. I used to just try and kick from the edge of square through the goals every single weekend while my brother's played until I was allowed to play. And then I started playing with local boys at the air at under tens when I was seven and loved it. I absolutely loved it. And people always say, people always ask me like, oh, I must have been hard playing with the boys. It was like some of my best memories because when I played with the guys, they didn't treat me like a girl or like a guy, just a footballer. And I loved it, and I'm still really close with some of those guys too, which was which was incredible, and I finished, had to finish. When I was playing Get This, I didn't know I wasn't going to play with the boys. Passed under twelves and I got to under twelves and I remember the club came to me and said, no, you can't play anymore. And I said, what do you mean I can't play anymore? And they said, well, their reason for me was mind blowing.
00:09:23
Speaker 3: But they were like, were.
00:09:25
Speaker 2: You going to get boobs one day? And so you can't play? And that was legitimately the reason they gave me. And they lied because I still haven't gotten boobs yet.
00:09:37
Speaker 3: They only came through when I breastfit and then they left again. So but that was the reason I was given and I couldn't believe it. So I was like, well, my brothers could keep playing.
00:09:47
Speaker 2: There was no other real explanation given the boys, you know, they were always great, and so I just stopped playing and then I played cricket as well. End up playing cricket for Victoria from a very young age up until London Nineteens. I was a very fast bowler and I remember I was playing local cricket. I think I was fourteen, thirteen forty years of age, playing local cricket, and a mom just came up to him.
00:10:11
Speaker 3: She was like, I heard you play footy and I was like yeah, and she said, well there's women at play. You can play in the women's camp. And I was like, what women played footy? This is insane.
00:10:20
Speaker 2: That was the only girl that played local footy with the boys. And so she's like, yep, come down to train. He was down at Hatfield and I went down and I was the only kid, and it was just all there was in this competition was six teams and that's it.
00:10:35
Speaker 3: So six teams. You had a B and C and everyone had sixteens and that was all there was. There was no girls teams, there was nothing. So I was allowed to play with the women. There was no rules. As a kid. The only thing was out to wear a helmet.
00:10:48
Speaker 2: So I just spent from you know, thirteen forteen, from that point, I'm playing against women wearing a helmet, and our bloody loved it. I absolutely loved it because for me, one of fourteen, all they wanted to do.
00:10:59
Speaker 3: Was beat them. I want to be the kid that.
00:11:00
Speaker 2: Beat the adult like that was like that was like, you know something that I generally enjoyed doing.
00:11:08
Speaker 1: Moana Hope is my guest, folks. It's the start of a illustrious football career back shortly, my guest on conversations today is Moana Hope. It's Moana the correct pronunciation, the Kiwi pronunciation of it. A truly amazing story. One of fourteen kids, her mom met her father and mother of Mary extraction I suppose that's the way an Ice way of saying it, and immigrated with her father to Australia. Was allowed to play footed with the boys when she was young, but when she turned thirteen or fourteen, she couldn't play anymore, but found out there was a women's competition. Have I heard a conversation that you were having and you talked about the love of the game, and it just resonated so much because I went back to when I was a kid. You know, it's about you, not about me, but it was just the sheer love of the game. You couldn't wait for Saturday to come to play. Can you just expand that a bit more for us? Well?
00:12:05
Speaker 2: I remember when I was a kid, I played with my brothers and every Sunday morning we used to get up before even sunrise, so we used to get up at like five am and would put your footy socks on, footy shorts, the whole uniform and sit in front of the heater on the floor and wait for the sun ups that would and that we would just be in our full kid like the whole morning, whole night, just everything was about footy. Go to the footy, play footy, and then stay and watch every game afterwards, just so we can keep the footy behind the goals with our mates, even with at home. Like my most prized possession was a footy. I slept with my footy because I didn't want anyone to steal it. And you know, we couldn't afford much growing out, like you know, complete transparency. There were times where we didn't even eat, so if you got a footy, that was like gold.
00:12:54
Speaker 3: And you know, anytime we.
00:12:55
Speaker 2: Can kick a footy, kick a foot in the hallway, through the doorways. We had enough to kids to almost fill a footy team. So we would play you know, three on three or four on four at the oval until after dark and we'll get in trouble for it, but it was worth it. Footy was everything like I and it still is. Like I've gone back to playing local footy this year and I.
00:13:13
Speaker 1: Just love it. Who Fo This.
00:13:17
Speaker 2: Year I've played for Abbathaudi down at Abba Faudi and we got knocked out in the second final.
00:13:22
Speaker 3: But I loved it. I just loved playing.
00:13:26
Speaker 1: The obvious question is who did you buk for when you're a kid.
00:13:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I grew up my whole life barracking for Hawthorne. I was Hawthorne supporter. I loved him.
00:13:34
Speaker 2: And the thing is though, when women when the women's comp came out and the ANFL said to all the clubs, submit your tender to have a women's team. I was told that Hawthorne's response was no thanks, we just want to focus on winning premierships, and they were winning premierships back then, and so for me, I was like, well, you don't care about women or you know the fact that women's or girls support your club. So I boycotted them because I played for colling when it went over to Collingwood and barrack for them, and so I kind of across a few different teams because I know a few of the male AFL players, and I've got so much respect for them and I'm just.
00:14:10
Speaker 3: Obsessed with it.
00:14:11
Speaker 2: I watch every men's game that happens on the weekend because i just love watching footage.
00:14:16
Speaker 3: So and I watched for.
00:14:17
Speaker 2: The players, like the incredible players that I get to watch, like Darcy from Bulldogs.
00:14:22
Speaker 3: What a freak.
00:14:23
Speaker 2: That Kid's going to be something big. You know, every club has their player that I enjoy watching. So I'm a bit obsessed with footy.
00:14:31
Speaker 1: So tell us about those you're playing women's footy. Had you've had a long career.
00:14:37
Speaker 2: With Yeah, I played local footy for years and years and years. Also played for Victoria captain Victoria. I think I was the only Victorian to ever win Player of the Championships. I've won goalkicking. I'm the only female at a VFLFL level to kick over one hundred goals in the season I played for Australia. I went to when Kevin Sheedy was coaching the men over in Island, which was cool because I got to meet Kevin Sheedy and have a chat to him and he was one of the most loveliest men i'd met. So it was just I've done some really cool things in footy and that's.
00:15:15
Speaker 3: Kind of yeah, done a lot and I've loved it all.
00:15:20
Speaker 1: So what we're doing footy wasn't professional and probably the girls even today, I probably can't make a full living from it, but you're playing it for fun. What we're doing in your personal life and your working.
00:15:32
Speaker 3: Life what I do now?
00:15:33
Speaker 2: So I actually have and I've had this business for ten years, and I've ran it for ten years, so I've ran it all the way through playing ahow. But i run my own traffic management company in Victoria, and I've got in Victoria, I've got over two hundred and fifty staff working every day. I've got an ops team made up of sixteen and i've got an office up in Queensland as well well, i've got about thirty five staff.
00:15:57
Speaker 3: So I've built that from scratch.
00:16:00
Speaker 1: And to do that, how did you do that? Just this morning I took the dog to the bench and there's a young lady dressed in high viz setting up all the traffic.
00:16:10
Speaker 3: Barricades, probably one of mine. Yeah, what's it called?
00:16:14
Speaker 1: What's your business called?
00:16:16
Speaker 3: That's the crazy thing about it.
00:16:17
Speaker 2: It's called you toility traffic management. But the crazy thing about it is when I was when I was like, you know, before my dad passed away, So like when I was maybe like ten eleven twelve, come out of the age of it was I ended up dropping out of school. I didn't go to high school because I took.
00:16:34
Speaker 3: Care of my dad.
00:16:35
Speaker 2: Like I quit to care for my dad and he had to move out of the house because it was too much for him because of his cancer was getting worse.
00:16:43
Speaker 3: He had a lakemia, and.
00:16:45
Speaker 2: So I moved out with him and I took care of him for years and I just was he basically was his nurse. I cooked for him, gave him his medicine, pushing on his wheelchair, bird bathroom, just cared for him and my mom had to keep working so she couldn't And so I didn't go.
00:16:57
Speaker 3: To high school.
00:16:58
Speaker 2: And when he died, they allowed me to finishing vcal for a couple of years, but I just went to school for footy.
00:17:03
Speaker 3: Play footy with the boys at lunchtime for sports. That was it.
00:17:08
Speaker 2: And so you know, when I go at eighteen, I got a job in traffic management. My mate got me a job in traffic management and I did that for a couple of years and about when I was about twenty. The company I worked for was the biggest company in Australia, and I was just dropping the Youdo off back to them and the manager was there and he was just by chance, was like, mo our engineer just quit. Can you come and do some adnant And I'm telling you I never used the computer, mate, And I was like, sure, why not? And so I went in there and he was like, can you open Excel?
00:17:41
Speaker 3: Two things. One I couldn't spell Excel.
00:17:44
Speaker 1: Two.
00:17:44
Speaker 3: I had no idea what he was talking about.
00:17:46
Speaker 2: But what I knew was this was an opportunity for me to have a career where I could do the things that I wanted more in the most in life, which was one, I wanted to rent my own house. I really wanted an own house where I can rent it and just be have my own independence.
00:18:05
Speaker 3: Too was I wanted to.
00:18:06
Speaker 2: Buy my dream car, which back then was a Holden Commodore. And so I thought, if I got this job, if I did really good at this admin, he might give me a job and then that could lead to full time, which could lead to me having those things I wanted the most.
00:18:21
Speaker 3: And so I just googled XL figured it.
00:18:25
Speaker 2: Out and did all the data entry, and at the end of the day he said, come back tomorrow. I went back the next day and then I kind of just wanted it so much that I downloaded the odd standards and the codes of practice, went home, read them or whatever I couldn't spell or understand, I googled it and understood the meaning of it, wrote it down, took notes, and so within three weeks I knew more about the legislation and any other member in the office. And within a year I became the manager of the engineering department. I started engineering myself and I made it the most profitable department had it ever been.
00:19:01
Speaker 3: And so I did that for about three years. But I wanted to learn more. Was such a sponge.
00:19:05
Speaker 2: I was like, I want to learn as much as I can, But there was no way I.
00:19:09
Speaker 3: Was going to grow in that office. It was me. I was the only female.
00:19:12
Speaker 2: There was about twenty men, and there was no room for growth. I was the manager of the department. I was engineering myself, but there were people below me being paid more. So I knew I needed to do probably move on to grow. So I moved to a different business in which I was an operation supervisor. I did that for a little while, learned everything, every aspect of the business, and then grew from that tool manager, learned every aspect of the business. And then somebody approached me one day and said, would you start a business for me? I did it, got it fully certified, quality, safety, environmentally, got it all of its pre colts, built it. I built it to about seventy staff and twenty five utes. And then I thought, you know, I'm doing this for everyone else, I'm working my ass off everybody else.
00:19:54
Speaker 3: Why not do it for myself? Just take a chance.
00:19:56
Speaker 2: So I met someone like a silent partner, and they wanted to do the same thing.
00:20:02
Speaker 3: So I started this business ten years ago.
00:20:04
Speaker 2: And now I've built it to over two hundred and fifty staff, and I've got about I think eighty vehicles in our fleet. And even playing AFLW, and I know I mentioned my business's name earlier. I don't ever mention my business name. Even when I played AFLW, I never said the name. I never promoted it publicly because I built it based on quality and safety. And we have your reputation in this in this state for being the best traffic management supplier company because of our position procedures, and I want it to.
00:20:35
Speaker 3: Stay that way.
00:20:35
Speaker 2: I don't want people to become engaged with it because it's mine and so it's I'm really proud of myself from where I've come from to be able to build it to where I have because it just shows that, you know, anything's kind of possible.
00:20:49
Speaker 3: Do you know what I mean?
00:20:51
Speaker 1: Wow? Well I still can't work Excel.
00:20:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it is. It is difficult.
00:21:00
Speaker 2: I just google how to do everything YouTube and I teach myself literally everything that's got.
00:21:06
Speaker 3: To do with that side, and I am the it of my business. So as possible.
00:21:11
Speaker 1: We need to take a break. Moana Hope is my guest. Folks back shortly, Welcome back everybody. If you just tuned in, it's an amazing discussion. Leith Forrest warned me. He said, you must speak to Moana Hope. It's an amazing story and it truly is. One of fourteen kids loved footy, played footy aff We haven't got to the AFLW yet, but just you just tuned in. Just before we went to the break, I talked about how she established her own business and if you didn't hear it, you'll have to get there. Go back, go back and listen, because it is truly amazing story. You mentioned the car you wanted to buy. I'm intrigued about the car. Your dad had, the Falcon station wagon and you had to fit fourteen kids in it. Tell me you didn't drive around with fourteen kids in the Falcon station work I'm not.
00:22:00
Speaker 3: I'm not going to lie to you. We absolutely did.
00:22:02
Speaker 2: I remember as a kid he used to put us all on the boot and we just laid it lay down. We had the big boots, so we would all lay down and sometimes at lights would pop our heads up. But back then it was quite normal to have like two kids in one seat ount like people did that. I remember we got pulled over by the police once and I think you just got to find but we could still.
00:22:22
Speaker 3: Drive away with five kids in the.
00:22:24
Speaker 2: Boot when like the yes, we had, yeah, the old school station wagon with the big boot, and so you know, as kids, you could just lay down, and then we did. We just laid stude by side, like four or five of us and in the back seat there was like probably two per seat out and one kid on the lap or on the floor, which which I think about it now as an adult it's the most dangerous thing in the world.
00:22:50
Speaker 3: But that's what he did. That's just the way we got around.
00:22:55
Speaker 2: I think we even drove us to Queensland like that once, which was crazy interesting.
00:22:59
Speaker 1: And a part of your life is the care you care for one of your sisters. Yeah, Vinnie is can you describe her condition? And yeah, Vinie and your role in her life.
00:23:11
Speaker 3: Of course.
00:23:12
Speaker 2: Lavinia was born with an intellectual disability. So she was born with something called Mebia syndrome and when she was born, she was the second person in the world ever born with it, and she had the most incredible specialist from the Royal Children, who had to fly to America to study the other person who had this visibility and then come back. And basically she was born as a vegetable and they didn't think she was going to live. They said to him, look, she won't live that long. That's just what it's going to be. And then the longer they she lived, they were like, oh, okay, we need to try and figure this out, and so they created like these special bikes that would make her body move and stuff like that. But basically, now as an adult, to give you an insight at who she is, she's thirty two years of age, but she has them. Her specialists explain this to me the development and mental capacity of a small child. So right now she's probably around twelve thirteen years of age in terms of the way that she's learning and growing, and she still needs twenty four to seven care. You know, it took me five years, maybe four or five years to teach her how to dress herself, a year and a bit to teach how to brush her teeth. So with someone like her, you can't just go this is how you put your top on off, you go like it's repetitive, and it's got to be repetitive until until her brain, until her brain can remember.
00:24:38
Speaker 3: It, till it can be like a process for her.
00:24:41
Speaker 2: So sometimes it takes months and sometimes it takes years. In saying that she is quite, she's quite literally my best friend, and even though she has the title of disabled, she's the most normal person I know because for her, you know, for us, for as humans as we've sold this big picture, you know, to be to be fulfilled, to have something in life, you've got.
00:25:06
Speaker 3: To have the big house.
00:25:07
Speaker 2: You've got to have the most expensive car, you've got to have the biggest income. You know, for her, she just wants the think she needs in life. She never looks outside of that. And so she's like, you know, I've proved this. I've been in rooms with super rich people, and I've said, go offer her three things, and I know what she'll asks for, because if you offer it to anyone else, I'll probably say, give me the big house, I'll take the range robe, and I'll take a trip around the world.
00:25:31
Speaker 3: That's what you ask for, because why not.
00:25:33
Speaker 2: She likes for ten dollars phone credit, a new charger for her phone, and a wallpark for it to plug into, because that's all she needs. She has a roof over her head, she has food on her plate, and she doesn't need more than that.
00:25:46
Speaker 3: And so for me, she doesn't.
00:25:48
Speaker 2: Get lost in the way that society tells you have to be.
00:25:53
Speaker 3: And she gives me as much banter as I give her.
00:25:57
Speaker 2: And she loves footy as much as I love footy, like she's obsessed with footy as well.
00:26:02
Speaker 3: So she's pretty incredible.
00:26:03
Speaker 2: And I'll take care of her for the rest of her life and I have for the last ten years. She's lived with me for ten years.
00:26:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's Vinnie.
00:26:11
Speaker 1: Who does she work for.
00:26:13
Speaker 3: The funny thing about Vinnie is she breaks for the pies, right.
00:26:16
Speaker 2: But the one thing I love about her, which is so funny, I'm like, I love that she does this because it makes me laugh the most. But say she's watching the dogs versus the lions, right, and she'll go, I'm barracking for the dogs. The dogs are going to win, and I'll say the lines, so she'll give me some shit.
00:26:32
Speaker 3: She'll be like, oh, stuff you and the lines.
00:26:34
Speaker 2: Get to the end of the game, the Lions win and I'll be like, who wants She goes lines, That's who I was barracking for, and she'll take off like a dog scarff and put her lion scarff on.
00:26:44
Speaker 3: So she's like a chameleon who ever wins. But she just loves footy. She just loves watching it as much as I do. She'll call me and be like, have you seen the school?
00:26:52
Speaker 1: How do you fit it all in? How do you fit it all in? You're talking about your business, you're talking about your kids, you're talking about your sister.
00:26:58
Speaker 3: Do you know what I need?
00:26:59
Speaker 2: I need a really good coffee sponsor, because that's how I fit it all in, Like good coffee, like.
00:27:04
Speaker 3: A really good too many coffee is probably good for it. The thing is the things I do. I love my job.
00:27:12
Speaker 2: I love because and the reason why I love my job, and this is being completely honest.
00:27:16
Speaker 3: I look at of the two.
00:27:18
Speaker 2: Hundred and fifty people every week, I'll look at how many of those work thirty eight hours before I.
00:27:23
Speaker 3: Look at a profit and lost statement.
00:27:24
Speaker 2: Because for me, it's more important for me that I'm able to help hundred and fifty to two hundred fifty people put food on a table and pay their rent. More important to me than making a profit. That is the most important thing to me. And that's why I love my job. You know, I take care of my sister because I love her. Why wouldn't I take care of the people that I love? And I do all those things because for me, ultimately, I want my kids to have.
00:27:46
Speaker 3: The best life like I grew up, not eating.
00:27:49
Speaker 2: I grew up and I haven't spoken about this yet, but I grew up with a lot of domestic violence in my house, which is probably the negative side of it all. And so for me, I want my kids to grow up seeing nothing, but I don't want them to ever see struggle and I also want them to feel the love like I want them to be loved, and I want them to be cared for. And you know, me working as hard as I work in me doing the things I do, is so that I can provide for everybody they care for, and that brings me joy.
00:28:18
Speaker 1: Is it hard for you to talk about domestic violence? So did you witness to me near that sort of impacts and surely on your relationship with your father?
00:28:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not hard, you know.
00:28:29
Speaker 2: You know, I went my whole life thinking that what I went through as a child was normal.
00:28:35
Speaker 3: I did. I went my whole life man.
00:28:36
Speaker 2: And my ex wife, I sat down with her, like, you know, ten months after I met her, and I was telling her about my childhood.
00:28:43
Speaker 3: But I was telling her like I'm talking to you, like I was just you know, this is my life, you know, and this is what happened to me. And I was so fine with it.
00:28:50
Speaker 2: And she sat me down afterwards and she goes, MO, I just need you to know that that is not normal, and I.
00:28:56
Speaker 3: Was like, yes, it is. Every kid surely every kid got beaten every day, Like no, they don't, that doesn't happen. And I was like, nah, that's not true.
00:29:06
Speaker 2: And when she said that, I thought, maybe I'll start talking to a therapist because maybe it's something I need to work through. And I've been seeing that same therapist since twenty twenty and it's probably the best investment I've ever made in myself because it's allowed me to process everything. And so when I talk about it, I've dealt with it. I'm at peace with it. I've been through all the stages of hating him and being mad at him and being reseentful of him, and I've gone through it, and I'm through it, and I understand that. You know, I can unlearn those things, and I can unlearn that way of living, and I can make sure that my kids and I am never that way ever, and so I'm at peace with that. I also know it's not right, and in no way, shape or form, there's violence need to be brought in on a child to make them do something or to see that they've done something right or wrong. And because I I am a child of the Mexic advance. And now I'm not saying I might have got slapped here and there, I'm saying that almost every day of.
00:30:07
Speaker 3: My life as a child, I was beaten.
00:30:10
Speaker 2: I was broken bones, I had bruises across my back, across my legs every day.
00:30:15
Speaker 3: And this is why I have so much time and.
00:30:17
Speaker 2: Respect and love for teachers, because when I went to primary school, primary school was the first time I could go somewhere I could feel safe for six hours. So for me, that's why I'm also I'm an advocate for you know, making sure that you know domestic violence.
00:30:34
Speaker 3: You know there's no place for it.
00:30:36
Speaker 2: There really isn't a place for it, and more needs to be done and people need to protect it.
00:30:40
Speaker 3: I know it's both.
00:30:40
Speaker 2: Ways, women and men, So we just need to make sure that's you know, that's what we.
00:30:47
Speaker 3: Do more in that space.
00:30:48
Speaker 1: And that's why you cared for him and he was dying.
00:30:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did because I loved him.
00:30:54
Speaker 2: I did love him, and I cared for him.
00:30:57
Speaker 3: And that was the only time he couldn't beat us because you had no strength left. He was done.
00:31:01
Speaker 2: He went from one hundred and forty kilo man, but he wasn't like, he wasn't obese.
00:31:05
Speaker 3: He was just huge. He was he could be in a rugby player.
00:31:08
Speaker 2: One hundred and forty kilo man down to probably forty I could see the bones down his back, and I could see every every boney ever had, So he couldn't he didn't have the strength to hit us.
00:31:18
Speaker 3: He couldn't get out of bed. So you know, caring for him was just because I loved him. And also I.
00:31:22
Speaker 2: Grew up believing that that was normal, so it was like, yeah, you know, all of it was normal.
00:31:28
Speaker 3: I loved him, that was it.
00:31:30
Speaker 1: Mona Hope is my guest. Folks, we need to take a break. We haven't when only finished. We haven't got to afl W yet. Thank shortly. Well, I guess on conversations today is Moana Hope afl W footy star, But we haven't got to that yet. Grew up as one of fourteen kids, played footy because she loved it, played in the what would you call it, like the state league I suppose from that yeah, VFL level, And you played for her Security Sharks. Yeah, and you had a couple of pretty good years. You kicked one hundred goals one year.
00:32:05
Speaker 3: One hundred and five. That was incredible. That was a great year.
00:32:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, and then it's almost as though you were just just born a little bit too early because AFLW came along and you were an obvious star in the Premier League. Tell us about the you know those first couple of years of AFL W.
00:32:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:32:29
Speaker 2: I remember when It's Bloody came out. I couldn't believe it, and I remember when Gil wanted to bring it forward. It was like the best news of my life because I always just thought playing against the Men. And then when I was selected as marquee for Collingwood, which was surreal. Remember getting the phone call on my couch and the first person I wanted to tell was my mom, so I.
00:32:47
Speaker 3: Drove there and told her, and it was just cool.
00:32:49
Speaker 2: I didn't tell any of my brothers and sisters because they wanted it to be like a press release thing, and I wanted it to be a surprise. And I also wanted to stick it up them a little bit because I was assisted at playday found they never got to.
00:33:02
Speaker 3: So it was really cool.
00:33:03
Speaker 2: It was just like the most insane moment. And when it all got announced. I remember all my brothers and sisters. I had all these miss calls, and when I finally got off stage, I called them and all they wanted to know was do they get free tickets.
00:33:16
Speaker 3: To the Men's ans. They just wanted all the freebies, Matt, Do I get a free jumper? Do I get free tickets? Do I get to meet Bucks?
00:33:26
Speaker 2: You know, it was all those questions, which was pretty hilarious, but it was it was surreal.
00:33:30
Speaker 3: It was insane. I remember round one, it was the whole stadium was sold out. It was packed. They had to close the doors, couldn't let anyone else in. People were jumping the fences.
00:33:40
Speaker 1: True, Still that was the Princess Park.
00:33:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, Cats Collingwood. Yeah.
00:33:46
Speaker 2: And I remember because they had shut the gates to people climbing the gates. I heard about that after the game and I and end up calling my mom after the game and she was like, yeah, those people who climbed the gates were your brothers and sisters.
00:33:57
Speaker 1: So tell us about those first couple of years. I mean it was tough. I mean, you've kicked I had it all here written down.
00:34:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll tell you. Like I it was hot.
00:34:11
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:34:11
Speaker 2: I playing local footy and just playing paying to be there, loving it to playing a foul was.
00:34:18
Speaker 3: A huge, huge shift.
00:34:20
Speaker 2: And you know I mentioned earlier, I'm playing local footy this year. I've kicked like sixty eight goals in thirteen games, and I had a great midfield and it wasn't over coached. So the first few years of afl W playing, I didn't play anywhere near what I'm capable of. I didn't I play like compared to what I play now, it was terrible, and it was terrible for lots of different reasons. You know, I think, I definitely think genuinely it was over coached, you know, like I feel like instead of just you know, they tried to be too fancy, instead of just let the girls play footy, get the footy forward, double teaming, like I've got double teams almost every game, and I just couldn't get the ball. And even when I did, my mental health was declining playing AFLW, and so I just didn't feel like I.
00:35:03
Speaker 3: Could play footy they way I wanted to, like on instinct.
00:35:07
Speaker 2: And so even though every year I played, I won the goalkicking for that club and I was always second in goal of sists as well, I still didn't play anywhere near what I'm capable of, and that was the hardest thing.
00:35:21
Speaker 3: And so for me it was like, what am I going to play next year?
00:35:24
Speaker 2: And it was that decision to play was because I wanted to make sure that I did everything I could to help build the league.
00:35:31
Speaker 3: And it became about building a league because one day, because.
00:35:33
Speaker 2: I hadn't had kids at this point, I thought to myself, one day, if I have a child and she's a girl, and she chooses to play footy, I want her to have the ability and write that by the time she's eighteen, they paid as equal athletes and she has the same ability as she would have had a son. And also, you know, for the little girls that are playing right now, for them to be able to see it to play it.
00:35:54
Speaker 3: One day, so I showed up to play for the future of the.
00:35:59
Speaker 2: Game because I knew I just couldn't play the way I wanted to play, Like I would leave training, sit in my car and cry just because I just it was just mentally, it just got the better of me going from local to AFL, and I learnt quickly, well not quick enough, that AFL's a business and local foody is fun and so you know, I couldn't adjust or you know, mentally, just it was hard on me.
00:36:25
Speaker 1: Was that because you're a forward and you depend so much on the supply, and Alim really somewhat Daisy Peers integrated really well because she's a midfielder.
00:36:33
Speaker 2: And yeah, easily one of the best. Like I played with Daisy Piers at Durbin for five years and she's easily the best midfield I've ever played with because she's incredible. No, there's no good forward without a great midfield. Like you talk about Darcy earlier. Darcy ain't getting that ball if Bulldogs didn't have a good midfield, let me tell you. And so, no, no forward can perform like even you know Linch at Richmond, he can't perform what midfield has he got kicking to him. So and that's not saying that midfield is a crap. I'm saying you've got to have a good tight unit.
00:37:03
Speaker 3: To get supply.
00:37:05
Speaker 2: So yeah, I didn't have the supply that I wanted, and then I was critiqued. I was critiqued as if I was supposed to kick a hundred goals in seven games and everything somehow was my fault, whether that was internally from the coaches or externally from the media.
00:37:21
Speaker 3: And it was just really difficult.
00:37:23
Speaker 1: I've never known you to being criticized. I just observed, I thought, you know, your best times were in playing Premier League and maybe AFL came a little bit late for you.
00:37:34
Speaker 2: Let me tell you there was one the criticism was like things like the criticism from the media was so bad that Gil mcgloughan sent me a text to check on me, Like it was like, I've seen that article.
00:37:45
Speaker 3: I just want to make sure you're okay.
00:37:47
Speaker 1: Lovely who write that?
00:37:51
Speaker 3: Do you know? The funny thing is I never looked. I stopped looking.
00:37:53
Speaker 2: And I remember because season two, week two, I remember my mum called me and she was like, have you seen this the newspaper?
00:38:01
Speaker 3: And I was like, Nah, I haven't.
00:38:03
Speaker 2: She's like, go get it, and I thought, finally they wrote something nice about me.
00:38:07
Speaker 3: I went down to go get it.
00:38:08
Speaker 2: My mom called me again and she had my whole family, like all my brothers and sisters there with her, and she had an allowed to peek speak and she's.
00:38:14
Speaker 3: Like, have you seen it yet? And I just got it and the back page is like hopeless.
00:38:19
Speaker 2: And that photo of me and my mom and this is the other part that really got me, and my mom goes, I found the guy who wrote it, and I looked him up on Facebook or do you want me to send him? And I was like, don't blood he send me imagine tomorrow's headlines, But I don't remember the people that said it, and I understand thinks something most things is like that as a written for clickbait, and so I had to just switch off to all of that, and you know, you know it was.
00:38:46
Speaker 3: That was the hard part. That was the really hard part was I.
00:38:49
Speaker 2: Couldn't do anything right, and you know, I always had to read and I was always man, I've got death threats from people, multiple death threats.
00:38:58
Speaker 3: I had to get the plice involved multiple times.
00:39:01
Speaker 2: I would be in the shopping center with Vinie, my special needs system. People would abuse me because I wasn't playing great footy. So it was it wasn't bloody easy.
00:39:11
Speaker 1: Had you had a very distinctive look though? Did that make it more like it was?
00:39:17
Speaker 2: I was abused a lot from I was abused a lot online from mostly men because I'm because I am gay, And a lot of the things that they would say would be around the fact that I'm gay and all playing their game, like you know, they would say, it's a man's game.
00:39:35
Speaker 3: Women don't belong here. So they were the two biggest things that people used to say to me all the time, and I copped it. Every single day.
00:39:43
Speaker 2: People would write and send me the most horrific things you could possibly think of.
00:39:47
Speaker 1: I find that really hard to believe. And we're talking, this is your charisma just emanates from from the screen. There's no doubt about that. I can't imagine why people would be critical about that, but that we're talking one on one. So how did that result? How did you come to terms for the door? Did you move on from it?
00:40:07
Speaker 3: Yeah? There was this, you know what, one thing.
00:40:10
Speaker 2: Two things that made me not worry about that stuff anymore. One is this one time I got this just real quick story. I know we're pushing to the end, but I got this message from a mum on Facebook and she was just like, thank you so much for replying to my daughter on Instagram.
00:40:24
Speaker 3: It's like, it's so fine.
00:40:25
Speaker 2: I tried to reply to all kids because kids are our future, right and I was like, no, it's so fun, all good, I reply to all kids.
00:40:32
Speaker 3: I hope she's Welsh.
00:40:33
Speaker 2: And the mom wrote back and she said this incredible message and she said.
00:40:36
Speaker 3: No, you don't understand.
00:40:37
Speaker 2: So my daughter, I've been sitting outside of her room for the last two weeks because she's been on suicide, what she tried to take her life. She hasn't left her room, she hasn't eaten. And the reason why is because she goes to school. Because she doesn't look like the other girl, she's bullied heavily, and because she's into sports, she's bullied heavily. She found you from AFLW. She watched your stuff on YouTube, and now she's finally.
00:41:01
Speaker 3: Leaving her room. And so for me, it was.
00:41:05
Speaker 2: Like that impact we can have on kids, both boys and girls in a positive way is super important. And the other thing was there was one of those death threats that I got, which was so bad. This death breat was so bad. It was a photo of Vinnie and it's quite graphic, has a shotgun to her head and there was blood everywhere, and the message was I'm going to do I'm going to come to your house and do this to Vinnie tonight.
00:41:30
Speaker 3: And so I was so scared.
00:41:32
Speaker 2: I went to stretch the police station. Police were incredible. They looked up the IP address, they found it and they called me back about two weeks later and they said to me, we found the person who did it. And I was shitoting myself. I couldn't sleep at night. I was so worried something was going to happen. I'd had stalkers find my house in the past, and so I literally just went to wait for that call. Got that call and the police said, look, we found the person who wrote it. And the thing is, this person lives out in the country and it's a twelve fourteen year old kid who have autism.
00:42:10
Speaker 3: And this kid was given up.
00:42:12
Speaker 2: As a baby from their family and they've moved from home to home and nobody's wanted them.
00:42:16
Speaker 3: And their problem is they see Vinnie and how I loved.
00:42:18
Speaker 2: Vinnie is and they wonder why they can't have that. And so he was like, what do you want me to do about it? And I said, just hug that kid, get someone to hug that kid, Get that kid some support and some help. That's all I care about, you know, because it clearly that's you know, they just need that. And so for me, when I look at those things and I think, you just don't know who's behind those comments, you don't know who's behind those messages. You have to just you know, you have to put on like you know, horse blinkers to it and.
00:42:45
Speaker 3: Just keep moving forward. Because the most important thing is your self awareness and the people around you.
00:42:50
Speaker 2: That's kind of what I focused on rather than what people were telling me I am or what I need to be.
00:42:56
Speaker 1: But we're running out of time. But I mean, I felt footy finished a three years for you, and obviously you talked about it. You didn't come away from it satisfied. But you're playing again because you love the game. You've done all sorts of other things You've been in, you know, reality TV shows. How's life been since footy finished for you?
00:43:15
Speaker 3: It's crazy, It's good.
00:43:16
Speaker 2: I love it. I love doing you know what I do. I do it, you know I love I loved doing the media side of stuff I enjoy. I've done some radio, I do a lot of appearances.
00:43:27
Speaker 3: It's great.
00:43:28
Speaker 2: I now that my kids are old enough now because I got two kids, I made that decision to go back to footy. So I'm thinking about it going back to footy next year in either a coaching capacity or intermedia capacity, because I just miss it and I love it. And you know, for me, it's just kind of like I stopped playing because it was too much my mental health and also I wasn't earning a lot enough to be able to do it, and now I'm ready to go back.
00:43:58
Speaker 1: No, we have and done your justice, because there's so much more left to talk about. But I think this is your journey is just beginning. It's as much as all the things you've done that it's been a delight talking to you. As I said, your charisma just radiates through the screen. So look, thank you so much, Thanks so much for sharing your story, and good luck going forward.
00:44:19
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much. And Happy Father's Day for yesterday as well.
00:44:23
Speaker 1: Thank you. It was an interesting day. I got five kids from all around the place. That was good one. I hope it was my guest folks, thank you so much for joining us.
