AFLW fan favourite Kate McCarthy thought her playing time was done after St Kilda delisted her following the last season, causing a stressful few months before she got the call-up from Hawthorn.
With four new expansion sides entering the competition ahead of season seven there was a lot of player movement and discussion between players and clubs. The 29-year-old said she met various clubs and was hopeful to sign with one in particular, but that deal fell through at the last minute.
Hawthorn picked up Kate McCarthy as a delisted free agent.Credit:Getty Images
Soon afterwards she got the call from her manager that the Saints wouldn’t be offering her another contract, making the All-Australian a delisted free agent.
“Everyone I knew was either getting re-signed or getting traded, and it was all sort of pencilled in and sort of nothing was really coming up from anywhere,” McCarthy told The Age.
“Every club that my manager had spoken to was just like, ‘Oh, yeah, like great, she’s on the radar, but we can’t say yes or no yet because we don’t know what we’re doing with our list’. And so, it’s just like this whole process and period of time where I don’t know if I’m going to even be playing football next year. It was really tough.”
McCarthy had met Hawthorn’s senior coach Bec Goddard before the sign and trade period, who, like the others, couldn’t give an answer as they were still working out how their inaugural list would look. However, the player stressed to the club: “I know that I can offer a lot, and I’m not finished playing football yet. I’ve still got heaps to give on the footy field.”
A “good couple of weeks” later, Goddard called McCarthy. Hawthorn would be offering her a contract.
“At first I kind of was just so relieved. Like, I wasn’t really happy, I was just so relieved. I went out and told my partner, ‘I reckon that’s like the first time I’ve actually breathed properly’ and it was just a huge sigh of relief. I finally knew what I was doing, where it was going,” said McCarthy.
“It was touch and go for a little bit, which was a bit scary. And it just sort of makes you realise how quickly your career can be kind of done in something that you don’t want it to be done – and how brutal the industry is at times.”
Hawthorn is McCarthy’s third AFLW club. She played three seasons with Brisbane’s first team before heading to St Kilda in 2020.
McCarthy had a difficult season, playing just six of the 10 home-and-away games and kicking just one goal in her side that finished second last. In her first season, she was Brisbane’s leading goalkicker with nine goals in eight games.
McCarthy says this contributed to her not enjoying her footy as much as she previously had. “A lot of the fun was taken out of it for a lot of different reasons,” she said. But being with Hawthorn has helped her find her spark again.
“It was like getting back to having fun. This pre-season has been the greatest thing ever and just made me really enjoy football and being at training and having that real enjoyment [again]… it’s just really suited me as a person.”
McCarthy wasn’t the only fan favourite to leave St Kilda after last season, with the club also delisting ruck and co-captain Rhiannon Watt before Melbourne recruited her.
Rhiannon Watt, left, of the Saints leaves the field injured during round eight. Credit:Dylan Burns
It was a surprise for many after Watt finished fourth in the club’s 2021 best and fairest and had suffered an ACL injury during a clash with Gold Coast last season, meaning she had just started rehab with the club.
“I’m just so happy for her and for a club like Melbourne to pick her up. They clearly see how valuable she is to a football program,” said McCarthy. “For anyone to pick her up, like all you had to do was probably have a conversation with her to realise how great she could be in your football program, whether she can play or not.
“Just her being able to then use football facilities to do her rehab and having access to football physios and at the really high level like anyone that has an injury should be entitled to. So yeah, I’m just so happy for her and how that’s ended up.”
McCarthy missed round one due to suspension but will face her old side St Kilda on Sunday, September 4, alongside fellow ex-Saints teammates Tamara Luke and Tilly Lucas-Rodd.
