ON OCTOBER 9, Sarah D’Arcy was playing AFLW, suiting up as a Melbourne top-up player at Norwood Oval.
On October 26, she donned the black and red of the Tiwi Bombers, playing in an NTFLW curtain-raiser ahead of the AFLW Dreamtime match, featuring her former side Richmond.
It’s just a snapshot of D’Arcy’s 2024, which saw both some personal health challenges and plenty of footy around the country.
D’Arcy has previously spent time teaching in Minyerri (about 600km south-east of Darwin), and the NTFLW was on her football bucket list. A few VFLW teammates had played some games for the Tiwi Bombers, a connection was made, and D’Arcy was suddenly on the list.
“I started off up north, and was flown up for a few games through January and February, playing with Tiwi up there,” D’Arcy told AFL.com.au.
“I had just signed with Casey, and they were pretty open and happy for me to still go up there through (VFLW) pre-season.
“I joined Casey, played a few games there before I had to have surgery. I’d gone through basically all of my AFLW career (eight seasons) with undiagnosed endometriosis. I’d been diagnosed in January with stage four, so I needed quite an extensive surgery to fix it all.
“That surgery was in the middle of the VFLW season, so I came back and played a few games towards the end of the season.
“Then I was a train-on at Melbourne, which I absolutely loved, it’s just an amazing group and an amazing club. I really, really loved that.
“I’d already committed to Tiwi – I was meant to be playing when I played my first game for Melbourne, so I had to delay it by a few weeks, then my first became the curtain-raiser before the AFLW.”
As a train-on with Melbourne, D’Arcy was only eligible to play if list availability slid below 24 players.
It meant that after 47 games over eight seasons with Collingwood and Richmond, D’Arcy had effectively conceded her time at the top had come to an end, and she was content to have a run around at training. But a mid-season injury crisis led to the surprise promotion, adding two matches to her career tally.
“It’s funny, I’ve actually really loved it. One thing about Melbourne is it doesn’t matter if you’re a train-on or player, they embraced me as one of them, and I felt like I was one of them. I think that group really had an impact on how I felt about being a train-on,” she said.
“I tell everyone, I got to enjoy work full-time for the first time in years as a teacher, but I still had my foot in the door of AFL. I only had to commit to the fun stuff, one session a week, and it was always the footy-related session. As bad as it sounds, I didn’t have the commitment or all the other things or the pressure.
“I thought I’d probably get named as an emergency (at some point), but I did not expect to have to play at all.”
The Melbourne cameo was made even more extraordinary by the extensive mid-year surgery D’Arcy underwent to relieve her stage four endometriosis symptoms.
Endometriosis is when uterine tissue grows outside the uterus, most commonly in the pelvis, ovaries, bladder and bowel. Stage four is the most severe diagnosis, with the widest spread of tissue on organs around the body.
“I was out for about seven to eight weeks. I’d built up my pre-season, and then had surgery and wasn’t able to basically move or do anything for three weeks, then slowly started running again,” D’Arcy said.
“But the running journey was kind of nice, because the first run I had after surgery, I had no stomach pain, and it had been a while since I’d been able to run pain-free, and it completely changed my life.
“I had the support of the Melbourne doctor and coaches at Casey and Melbourne to gradually build me up and introduce me back into training as well. I felt like I did two pre-seasons.”
D’Arcy will play out the remainder of the NTFLW season with the Tiwi Bombers, and is set to actually make the move to Bathurst Island (one of the two major islands that make up Tiwi) in January.
She will teach science at Xavier Catholic College, while her partner has been offered a job at the school as a tradesman. It’ll be quite a career change after spending this year teaching at Vermont Secondary College, in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.
“I love how different it is. The thing that draws me definitely to Tiwi Bombers is the group of girls, their passion for football is absolutely contagious,” D’Arcy said.
“These girls are absolutely amazing. The talent they’ve got there, I just love being a part of it. They’re all unreal footballers. Given the chance, I’m sure they could have gone places as well. So anything I can do to help develop them will be good, too.”
