ESSENDON
Kelli McGroarty scored twice in a cup final, set up the fourth, and then spent ten minutes explaining why nobody should get carried away.
The interview does not go the way these interviews normally go.
A player has just scored twice in the biggest game in her club’s history. There is a medal around her neck and a trophy ten metres away. The obvious move is to enjoy it, and she is plainly delighted, and then she says this:
“I mean, yes, I’m very excited about it, but the job’s not finished. Very big on that.”
People had been messaging her all week. Good luck. Enjoy it. Have a big one afterwards. She did not want to hear any of it.
“I had people saying stuff before. Good luck, celebration, all that. And I’m like, celebration doesn’t happen. You think about the celebration, it doesn’t come.”
The chance she took
There is a version of Kelli McGroarty’s season that reads as inevitability. Ten consecutive league games with a goal in them, the second-longest run anyone can find in the history of this competition. The player Heidelberg were warned about in the build-up, who then scored twice anyway.
The truth is less tidy. She arrived in Australia this year on very short notice.
“Moving here in general was very last minute and very spontaneous,” she said. “I honestly had not really much idea. I took a huge chance. Really paid off.”
She admits she did not understand what she had walked into until reasonably late.
“I don’t think I truly understood how important it was until maybe Bulleen,” she said of the cup. “I try to take every game as just another game, but I’m getting text messages beforehand saying good luck, and I’m like, oh, okay.”
What convinced her was not the football. It was everything around it.
“The club just did such an amazing job supporting us. Everyone was out here, and just the support we had. I had all my little girls here, and then just so many faces. It was just an amazing experience.”
She goes to watch the men’s side whenever she can, and a good number of them turned up for her and the girls on Saturday. She talks about the mascots who walk out with the team every single game. She talks about the club as family, and about the fact that from day one it has been the sort of place where people give you the shirt off their back.
“Every issue I’ve ever had here, I’m getting looked after.”
Two goals, and the one she made
Her first came four minutes into the second half, and it was a poacher’s goal in the least glamorous sense. Bronte Peel took the ball down the right, dragged three defenders with her, cut inside and forced Mia Bailey into a strong save at the near post. Heidelberg could not clear it. McGroarty was first to the loose ball in the six-yard box and finished from close range.
Five minutes later she was in the air, above two defenders, meeting Grace Maher’s corner at the back post and heading it in.
The official Football Victoria sheet records that second one as a Heidelberg own goal. The club has it down as hers, and so did the commentary at the time. Given she got above two defenders to put a header on target, the club’s version seems the fairer reading.
Then in the seventy-ninth minute she made the fourth, her run dragging the last defender across so that Maggie Jenkins could slide the finish past an advancing Bailey.
Two goals and an assist in a cup final, and she would rather talk about the fixture list.
“We’re still trying to fight for the title, and then pretty sure there’s playoffs. Still not entirely sure how everything’s run, but this was one of our stepping stones that we wanted to get.”
What she does allow
For all the deflection, McGroarty is not pretending Saturday did not matter. She simply refuses to treat it as an ending.
“You don’t really feel it until later, but we did make history,” she said. “When this comes out, five, 10, 15 years from now, we’ll always be the first.”