Source :- THE AGE NEWS
Erone Fitzpatrick is a star – All-Australian, Carlton leader and selected in the Irish representative AFLW side – but there’s one thing about Australian rules football that leaves her baffled.
Club loyalty – or rather, the lack of it.
Hailing from County Laois in Ireland, Fitzpatrick helped lead them to their first Gaelic football title in over 20 years in 2022, before being poached by Carlton for the 2023 season.
She played with the same teammates from age four to 23; switching clubs or counties is “unheard of at home”.
“Talking to a lot of the Aussies here, they can’t get over how loyal you are to your club and your county throughout your whole career,” Fitzpatrick said.
“I would play with the one club for my whole football career, and I would play with the one county for my whole football career, and they couldn’t get over that.
“That’s why we find it really strange, the whole trade period and people leaving clubs and going to different clubs and stuff like that.”
Fitzpatrick hopes she can stick with her AFLW side in a similar way.
“I would love that,” she said. “You never know what can happen in the future, but I think it would be very weird for me to go anywhere else. I think if you asked a lot of the Irish players, they would say the exact same thing.”
Since the AFLW’s inaugural season in 2017, the presence of Gaelic football cross-coders has skyrocketed, with 44 active Irish players in the league and two inactive.
Their effect has been profound. The Irish players play a lightning-fast and attacking style. North Melbourne, who have won two consecutive AFLW premierships, currently have five Irish players on their list, while the Brisbane Lions, Adelaide, Geelong and Carlton all have a strong contingent of Irish players.
The impact in Ireland has been seismic as well. On one hand, the game’s popularity has surged, with Irish broadcasters showing AFLW games, dedicated 3am watch parties and growing fan bases on social media.
But the amount of Irish-born players lured to Australia has also left a growing hole in Gaelic football pathways, especially in smaller regions,
“I’m from a very small county, not saying that I would have been a big fish, but I probably would have been at home,” Fitzpatrick explains.
“For my county to lose like someone like me is hard … because in a small county, talent is very limited compared to the bigger counties that have a huge pool of talent.
“Counties like Mayo have six girls playing in the AFLW – that’s a huge chunk of unbelievable talent from one county.”
There’s enough Irish talent in AFLW to make a representative game in the mould of State of Origin possible. Fitzpatrick represented Ireland in that match in Sydney, in front of a sellout crowd.
Speaking in the lead-up, Fitzpatrick was thrilled to be part of it.
“My parents are flying out for the game, which is so important to me, and I’ll also have my aunties, family friends, my grannies’ next door neighbour,” she joked.
“I want to make them proud, and I want to make all the young girls proud and know they can chase their dreams and be anything they want in life.”
Now, the focus is on the upcoming AFLW season, which begins on Sunday at Marvel Stadium when Fitzpatrick’s Blues take on the Saints before the clubs’ men’s teams do the same.
The Blues’ women’s side made it to a preliminary final last season, where they fell short against the Lions.
It was a meteoric turnaround – Carlton finished 14th in 2024 before introducing a crop of young, extroverted talent in 2025.
Fitzpatrick was a pivotal part of the resurgence last year, averaging 17.5 disposals and kicking 13 goals.
On field and on social media, fans noticed something different about the Blues – they were having fun.
Before every game, the team performed a dance and sang Australia’s unofficial national anthem – Untouched by the Veronicas – to ease pre-game nerves.
They booked in official line dancing classes and were taught choreography by youngsters Poppy Scholz and Meg Robertson.
“We want to keep chasing that joy,” Fitzpatrick said.
“We don’t want to chase last year, but we want to keep building on it. Keep building those foundation blocks … and still bringing the joy and finding the joy in it all because, ultimately, you play your best football when you’re having fun, and we have a really fun group.”
On a scale of 1-10, Fitzgerald’s rates her dancing skills as a solid four, “below average, but I can shake my hips and stuff, but that’s about it,” she adds.
Would The Veronicas still be their anthem, or will they start afresh and choose another song?
“We’re actually not 100 per cent sure,” Fitzpatrick says.
The dancing, however has stepped up a notch.
“Poppy [Scholz] taught us a dance last Thursday and we performed on Friday, and we were a bit rusty,” she laughs.
“Last year it was mainly line dancing, but the level this year was a bit hard, so we’ve told Poppy to bring it down a bit.”
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