“I spent a good couple of weeks after last season really just trying to figure out what the right thing to do is[and] what I wanted to do. It was really hard,it wasn’t a given[signing with Port].”
But the opportunity to play at the club where her father became a legend was too great to pass up.
She said she was also at a point in her career where she felt excited to be a part of something new and join a team in its beginning stages.
Greg broke down in tears when Erin told him she would be Port’s first AFLW captain,making them the first father-daughter captaincy duo in top-flight Australian football.
“I felt like I’d given everything that I could to the Adelaide Football Club and I felt like I was leaving them and they were in a great space and I felt like it was just a different purpose for me,” Erin said.
“I was excited to start something new with a young team and at a club that obviously is very close to my heart.”
That closeness to the club was developed through her father’s playing days.
Greg Phillips was one of Port Adelaide’s greatest players and is a member of the Australian Football Hall of Fame. He played 343 SANFL games between 1976 and 1993 (with a four-year stint at Collingwood from 1983-1986),and earned a club best and fairest,All-Australian blazer,and was captain from ’91 to his retirement.
Despite this rich club history,and the deep-seated rivalry with cross-town club Adelaide,he said he was mostly just happy his daughter,who grew up loving football,has had the opportunity to play.
With no pathways or opportunities to play at a national level before AFLW began in 2017,Erin followed the path of basketball instead,becoming a FIBA world champion with the Australian national teamand a two-time WNBA champion.
He said his daughter’s talent and passion for football had always been evident.
“As a young kid,she always loved football and I was just happy that she was actually playing footy. This has become a bonus now for me that she’s come back to play for the club that I played most of my life with,” he toldThe Age.
“John Cahill,our senior coach,he always used to say to me,you know because she was short hair and blonde,no doubt she would have looked like a little tomboy anyway,‘who’s that little boy over there’ ...[he] used to say she’s one of the most skilful kids he’d seen play.”
He proudly tells the story of Erin’s time playing for SMOSH West Lakes,when she was the only girl playing in the boy’s team and won the best and fairest for the under-13s. It was the same year Brett Ebert,who went on to play for Port Adelaide,won the under-14 award.
“So,she must have had some ability to win that,” he said.
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Greg said,having watched her play at the Crows,her move to Port Adelaide was all “a bit surreal” and it would “really hit home” seeing her play at Alberton.
While Erin grew up watching her father play from the stands,now her own kids,wife,parents and family will be covered in teal,black and white,this time representing her.