Brooke Walker spent that first night watching as much Australian rules football as she could. She did the same the next night, and the night after that. She had a lot of research to do, and not much time to do it. She was going to be paid to play the game at its highest level. It was probably a good idea, she thought, to figure out how it worked.
Walker had not grown up playing what is, depending on whom you ask, Australia’s most popular sport. She was born in New Zealand, unabashed rugby territory. Her first sporting loves had been some of that sport’s many varieties.
As a child, she had played touch, the minimal-contact version, and rugby league. After her family moved to Australia when she was a teenager, she proved good enough at the small-sided version of the sport, rugby sevens, to travel to the 2016 Olympics with her adopted homeland.
Australian rules, by contrast, had never really appeared on Walker’s radar. “Even when I was 14 or 15, I wouldn’t ever have seen it,” she said. “I didn’t even know who played in it.” That held until she was 24, when one of the Australian Football League’s most popular, most powerful teams — Carlton, based in the game’s Melbourne heartland — called and asked if she would like to play in it.
What she was about to learn…
