Cork's Erika O'Shea on winning Australia's Grand Final: My parent's support was huge

Winning the AFLW Premiership title with North Melbourne is something that hasn’t hit me yet.

It is something that I never thought I would be able to achieve when I first came out three years ago. To be able to win the Premiership, it is incredible and it is something that I will always remember.

Although this was one of the most challenging years for me, yet it was the most rewarding. To be able to have that success and experience, I will carry it with me for the rest of my life.

It was an amazing season for us at North Melbourne to go undefeated and that is something that has never been done before. Also winning the club’s first Premiership for the Women’s team, to add that to the list of things we achieved this year was unbelievable.

After losing to Brisbane in the final last year, we weren’t sure how the Grand Final would go this year. But what we knew was last year’s final drove us on.

If you lose an All-Ireland final or a Grand Final like that, you either come back stronger or freeze on the big stage. Luckily for us, we just drove on and we were able to get the win.

We put an awful lot of work in and last year's game definitely was in the back of our minds. So to be able to achieve the win in the end and beat Brisbane in the final was unreal for us.

To have my name alongside such talented players in Australia and to have my name on the teamsheet for the first Premiership-winning team at North Melbourne will go down in history and it is something none of the girls will ever forget.

I had a lot of challenges this year. So to be able to win the Premiership was something that made it all a lot better.

CHALLENGING

There are a lot of sacrifices that have to be made. This year was the most challenging year for me out there. It was a year that I struggled a lot being so far away from home in Ireland.

If my parents did not come out, I don’t know if I would have been able to stay out in Australia for the full season. 

When they came out, it was a huge help and allowed me to fully focus on my football.

To be able to have them and my family there for the Grand Final was incredible, along with people like my 'Melbourne uncle' Bill O’Mahony, who is originally from Macroom but lives in Melbourne and has attended all of my games since my first season. 

To be able to get the medal at the end of it, made me feel like it was meant to happen. It will be great to celebrate with my family and return to Macroom, where I started my career in sport.

Year by year, I feel I am definitely becoming more accustomed to AFLW. But it is becoming more challenging for everyone because every year the standard is going up and up.

When I first came out to Australia in 2022, the standard wasn’t as high as it is now. The fitness levels and our strengthening programmes have gone through the roof.

For us at North Melbourne, we put a great effort into our pre-season and really took our fitness to the next level. To be able to have that hard work transfer into our win in the Grand Final was a great reward for us.

The high-performance culture at the club was obviously outstanding. We are a very close-knit team, so they are like a second family. But at the end of the day, it is professional sport and it can be very cut-throat.

We were lucky the culture was good in our club and that we were able to come together as a team and win for each other.

I can see myself playing AFLW over the next couple of years. 

But in the future, I am hoping to come home to Cork and have a few years of playing and win an All-Ireland hopefully in Croke Park.