WHEN Meghan McDonald’s brain started writing a retirement speech unprompted, she knew it was time to pull the pin.

The Geelong skipper has been in discussions with her club throughout the year around her playing future, which was brought into sharp focus when she was dropped early in the season.

McDonald has been omitted from six of 11 games this year, and also works for the club in the marketing and communications team, so knows her way around words.

“It was an on-going thought process – it has to be when you’re my age (34) and continuing to play, [given] the trajectory of the competition and who’s coming into it and the skill level of those coming through,” McDonald told AFL.com.au.

“I feel like I was having some discussions a couple of weeks ago, and I hadn’t definitively made the decision. But I was speaking with the club, and that evening, I went home, and my retirement speech was coming to me in my head, and I thought, ‘oh, that’s probably it, I can lean into that feeling.’

Footy hasn’t always been straightforward for McDonald. She was an avid fan – her late father, Gordon, was North Melbourne’s physio during its glory years in the 1980s and ’90s, and is a life member of the club – but very few girls played junior footy in the outer east of Melbourne in the early 2000s.

So McDonald’s attention switched to tennis as a junior (she’s joked in the past she was “good enough to travel Australia, I didn’t travel the world”), and picked up footy as an adult with VWFL powerhouse Darebin.

She was far more raw than her superstar teammates like Daisy Pearce, Katie Brennan and Melissa Hickey, and was one of the last players added to the Western Bulldogs’ list in 2017.

As a key forward, she managed a handful of games, but was promptly delisted, returning to the Falcons and training up as a key back.

Geelong added her to its squad ahead of its entry in 2019, she won the club’s first AFLW best and fairest, and by 2021, she had taken over from Hickey as captain.

At McDonald’s best, she was a ferocious one-on-one defender, who read the play beautifully and had a very safe pair of hands overhead, named All-Australian in 2019 and 2021.

But time stops for no one, and McDonald found herself dropped in round four this year, in the rooms pre-match and presenting a jumper to her replacement, draftee key back Lexi Gregor.

“[This year] was difficult at times, no doubt, but I’ve reflected on my career in the past week and realised that there have been times like that throughout it,” McDonald said.

“It’s interesting how similar some of the feelings at the end can be to the ones at the beginning, when you’re trying passionately to be in the team, but also understand why the team is selected the way it is.

“It was really important to me that I do that, and I think in the conversation around me not being in the team that week, I expressed that I wanted to give Lexi her first ‘hoops’. I hope I wasn’t publicly looking like it was super difficult – there were challenging times that week, but I really enjoyed the occasion for Lex, and I meant what I said – these players coming through are really good people and they will have long careers in the game.

“I’ve had plenty of people come before me and have experienced their careers, and I’ve been very fortunate to have shared in that as well. You can’t always be longing to live in this time period (forever), I’ve had plenty of highs in mine (career), and now it’s their turn.”

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As to what’s next? McDonald isn’t going to be lost to football.

She’s already forging a career as an expert commentator, providing special comments for AFLW games on Fox Footy, and becoming the first woman in 3AW’s history to be a special commentator on a men’s final earlier this year.

McDonald also has her heart set on finding a path in clubland.

“I’ll probably sleep in for a couple of weeks after that (her final game on Saturday),” she said with a laugh.

“The diversity of opportunities and experiences that I’ve had in the game has been the source of so much gratitude, and I’d like to continue to develop broadly beyond that, and continue to do some work in the media, continue to do some comms, but ultimately build towards being in a football club and hopefully leading a program one day perhaps, or maybe coaching is part of that along the way.

“I’m hesitant to narrow it down too quickly, but there are the realities of having to get a job, continuing to be employed. I’ll get through the admin of retiring and replying to all the wonderful messages I’ve received, and 2026 will be here soon enough.”