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Sydney Swans AFLW co-captain Chloe Molloy has always prided herself on her ability to make the right decision under pressure.
When she’s on the field, Molloy shuts out external noise and focuses completely on her job. She knows instinctively when to bring teammates into play, and when to dominate the scoreboard with goals from any angle.
Ahead of Saturday’s AFLW semi-final against Adelaide, Molloy reflected on a decision she made seven years ago that changed her life forever.
After turning 12 in Melbourne, Molloy stopped playing organised Australian rules due to a lack of playing opportunities for teenage girls and switched seamlessly to basketball.
Molloy’s talent on the court eventually earned her a full scholarship to play college basketball in the United States, which she initially accepted in 2016.
However, shortly after accepting the scholarship, the AFLW was announced with its inaugural season due to kick off in 2017. Molloy had two options, a guaranteed offer of free university education combined with elite sport, or a chance to join a league yet to play its first game, in a sport she hadn’t played regularly in years.
Sydney Swans co-captain Chloe Molloy.Credit: Janie Barrett
“If you’d go back and calculate the hours and kilometres and money my parents spent investing in me trying to get a college scholarship, then I finally get there,” Molloy said. “It’s like I had run a marathon, they’d helped me get through it and I got to the finish. Then I was like, ‘Oh, actually, I don’t even want to cross the line’.
“It’s a hard pill for your parents to swallow at that age, I was making a huge life decision. They challenged me on it, I think for Mum and I, for like a good week there was just a bit of tension between the two of us. It was all in good spirits as she had to be the devil’s advocate at that time.
“The best thing was that it definitely added to my reassurance that I do want to do this. I was like, ‘I’m sticking to my guns here’. I really want to go play footy. I guess I had that confidence in myself and knew I was going to be OK.”
Molloy debuted for her childhood club Collingwood in the second season of AFLW in 2018, winning the club’s best and fairest award in her first season.
“I definitely think a part of my football DNA comes from me as a basketballer.”
After spending her formative teenage years as an athlete in basketball she was able to fully utilise the skills she had honed playing point guard on the hardwood and translate them to the football oval.
”In a position like a point guard, you’re the creator,” Molloy said. “When a basket happens down one end, you’ve got to have knowledge of who’s on the court and who you want to score, how you want them to score and what shot you want.
“It’s a complex mindset to be a point guard because you have to think about so much, so quickly, and make split-second decisions and then if it doesn’t go how you want, you’ve got to be able to change and adapt. I definitely think a part of my football DNA comes from me as a basketballer.”
Molloy was living “her best life” in Melbourne. She was surrounded by friends and family, playing for the club she had barracked for as a child and had few complaints.
Chloe Molloy can’t be stopped by Fremantle’s Emma O’Driscoll.Credit: Getty
After six seasons spent at Collingwood, Molloy was suddenly faced with another unexpected decision. Sydney, a club that had gone winless in their first AFLW season, was interested in signing her on a five-year contract.
”I think I was just ready for a new challenge and the opportunity with Sydney came in at the right time,” Molloy said. “I knew it was going to be a challenge and I knew I was going to be uncomfortable, but that is solely the reason why I wanted to come because I think your best growth comes from that.
“Then there was the faith of the club showed me to offer me such a long-term deal. I was like, ‘There you go: there’s my college scholarship, but in a different form’.”
She arrived in Sydney in May at a club desperate to compete after their tough opening AFLW season when the club song hadn’t been sung once in victory.
Chloe Molloy has transformed the Swans in her first season at the club.Credit: Janie Barrett
A month into life at the Swans, Molloy, who was appointed co-captain, was impressing her teammates on the field but was struggling internally with the move to a new city. Molloy always felt a responsibility to be a positive presence in the changing room, but increasingly felt that it was time to allow space for vulnerability with her teammates. She told them she was struggling.
“I look back then and I think being vulnerable is a really powerful thing,” Molloy said. “Especially someone like myself, you might look at from an outside perspective, and I don’t know, it looks like I’ve got everything sorted and everything together. But that’s not to say that I don’t have my own struggles and I think a lot of the girls would view me as like, you know, I’m always OK.
“I wanted them to see the other side of me and encourage also vulnerability. It was just a part of me opening up to the group and for them to see a different side of me which probably helped me grow a lot closer to the girls and build stronger, deeper connections which translates onto the footy field.”
Two days before the semi-final, Molloy is greeted warmly at the Swans’ training facility by staff from every department, from the medical staff to the barista. In a few short months, Sydney has truly become Molloy’s home.
She is in career-best form, driving the Swans to a semi-final that few fans would have given them a chance of reaching at the start of the season.
Throughout the interview, she talks warmly about her teammates, but equally, she is aware of the crucial role she plays in growing the code in Sydney.
“I think there’s a responsibility on me,” Molloy said. “I know that there is probably a whole queue of people that would kill to be in my position. That has never left me and there’s so many people who would love to be in my position and I want to leave the game better than I found it.
“I just want to play a small role in helping footy in NSW, in helping young kids believe that they can achieve their goals and dreams.”
Swans captain Chloe Molloy in action at Henson Park.Credit: Getty
Last Saturday, in the elimination final victory over Gold Coast, Molloy scored three goals and produced one of the best performances of the season in her already crowded highlight reel.
She approached the game like a diligent student entering an exam hall knowing that all the right questions were going to come up. She arrived at the stadium fearless.
“ I think you need to enjoy what you’re doing and have fun with it,” Molloy said.
\“One of the (Swans) players actually spoke to me before the game and she was like, ‘I’m so nervous’. She asked, ‘How are you so calm?’
“I’m like, ‘Well mate, I trained, I trained so hard, and I’m so confident in my ability’. This is what I’m trying to teach the girls: you build your confidence in your own capabilities throughout pre-season and through training.”
A big crowd in Adelaide awaits Molloy, desperate to stop the Swans’ run that has shaken up the AFLW. Molloy and her teammates are not ready for football to end just yet.
“Nothing really changes in the four walls (of the Swans) except for the fact that we’re going to finals and we haven’t played Adelaide before,” Molloy said.
“There’s a really strong belief in what we’re doing and the way we’re performing can come up against any side but we’re not getting too far ahead of ourselves.
“I do know that this group is really special and you can see in the girls’ faces that there’s like a lot of belief running around that you think, ‘Why not us?’”
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