Monique Conti is one of Australia’s most influential female athletes, playing for both Richmond in the AFLW and Melbourne Boomers in basketball.
Her football year culminated in winning the AFLW’s best and fairest and her fifth straight Richmond best and fairest, proving what hard work and determination can lead to.
Her success though, was something she had to fight for, as she grew up in a time just recently where girls weren’t offered the same sporting opportunities as boys.
Listen to the conversation with Monique Conti here:
In this episode of The Weekend Briefing, Monique joins Jamila Rizvi to explain how the Matildas have helped put the spotlight on women’s sport and what’s next for her own AFLW career.
Monique also describes what it was like being a young girl playing football and compares it to the opportunities presented now to girls of a similar age.
“Growing up when I was with the boys and had to stop at 14, I thought I was the only person in the whole world that had to deal with that,” she said.
“And then when you come into playing with women, you don’t realise it happened to nearly every single one of us, which is just an incredible story on its own.”
Monique was lucky where her age allowed her to play football all through her younger years, but with women having their own leagues still quite a new concept, it was difficult to form teams week in a week out.
“Sometimes we had to forfeit games. Sometimes we played with some other girls on our team, and we had to share plays as well, like we had to scrape through matches,” she said.
“And now I’m going to a local club to do an appearance and there’s like four under 12 girls’ teams or there’s like 6 under 8’s.
“I I think to even see where the AFL women’s is at now… who would have even thought we would be playing professional, and now we’ve got that many girls playing professional sport.”
To hear all of Monique’s chat, listen to the episode, “Monique Conti is changing the way we see female athletes” on the LiSTNR app now.