Blues skipper thankful for local support

KERRYN Harrington said while personal accolades are a great honour, they couldn’t be further from her focus ahead of her fifth AFLW season.

The Carlton captain was named a joint winner of the Bendigo Sports Star Award for April, after also being named on the AFLW All-Australian squad for a third time last season.

“My job now is very much to be guiding the youngest players in our team and try to build something special down at Carlton,” she said.

Harrington said she is still well connected to the Bendigo community, having been recruited from the Bendigo Thunder in 2018 and previously playing basketball for the Bendigo Spirit.

“Playing two sports, I’ve come across a really large selection of people who support sport in Bendigo and I’m really privileged to be from Bendigo and have the support I have,” she said.

The 30-year-old Blues defender said the next season will be about bolstering the young squad, especially with four new teams in the league.

Harrington was also a part of the negotiation committee that helped establish a new one-year collective bargaining agreement which increased the average salary for AFLW players.

She said while the process was long, it will be a “gamechanger” for current and emerging female footballers.

“It means players are going to be able to go down to part-time work outside of football and dedicate more time to training and craft, which is going to increase the standard but more importantly it means the work-life balance for players is teetering towards something that’s manageable,” she said.