Brooke Patterson: Crossing the Court
- Jan 12, 2017
- 4 min read
Can a Best & Fairest night change your life? Brooke Patterson is living proof that it can.
On the night of September 10 2015, Patterson was a 26-year old La Trobe University PhD candidate who had forged a stellar 17-year basketball career. Coming out of Ulverstone on the north-western coast of Tasmania, she was a five-time Tasmanian captain and Big V Championship League player with the Bulleen Boomers.
Her love of basketball was first tested when she moved to Melbourne in 2008. The lonely months away from home weren’t the problem – “it was like a basketball trip”, she says – but independence on top of the demands of study began to push her love for the sport.
“Committing to that level of basketball and studying physio was probably a lot, and it was a big move living out of home for the first time.
I knew deep down that I had gotten as far as I could.”
Patterson still maintains that she is “unsure” if she would have made the decision to leave basketball and take the chance on a new sport had she not gone with a group of friends to Melbourne’s Best & Fairest Night at Crown Palladium. Or, more specifically, had she not seen Demons’ captain Daisy Pearce hold the room in the palm of her hand as she discussed the future of women’s football.
A remarkable footballer and a born leader, Pearce was a six-time Helen Lambert Medallist and one of the faces of the drive towards a national women’s competition. Upon receiving the club’s inaugural Best Female Player Award, Pearce spoke of Melbourne’s history of driving major developments in the game’s history and that “in thirty or forty years time, football people will tell of how the Melbourne Football Club were pioneers and started the first women’s team”.
“I thought, ‘This sounds amazing. I’m definitely going to give it a go,’” reflects Patterson. “I was just in the right place at the right time and I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got to give it all I’ve got.’”
Pearce received a standing ovation and Patterson saw the light. She was going to start a new sport and to hell with what happened - so long as she played with Daisy Pearce.
“Everyone was just in awe of her and hearing what Melbourne was doing around women’s football and the excitement around women’s football in the country.”
Patterson joined the Pearce-captained Darebin Falcons at the start of the 2016 pre-season with fellow Big V teammate Lauren Pearce, who would go on to also be drafted by Melbourne. “I was lucky I didn’t know what I was getting into,” she admits.
On her first night at pre-season training, Patterson cheerfully arrived at her new club dressed in her fiancée Todd’s footy gear… given that it was February and everyone else was still in running clothes, she gave away that she was new to the sport.
And soon she was facing challenges she hadn’t even imagined: she was unwittingly joining Australia’s greatest women’s football club. The Falcons were on track for their fourth straight premiership and no fewer than 14 of their players were taken in the October draft, seven as either marquee or priority selections. ‘Darebin’ was a byword for professionalism, strength and class.
“By the end of the first week, I realised I was with the best,” says Patterson. Nonetheless, she hadn’t left the sport she excelled at to play reserves. She resolved to make the VFL side before the end of the season.
However, curveballs came her way. First off, she married Todd (these things happen). She returned from her honeymoon in March and ran straight into a hamstring injury. If things hadn’t been hard enough at the beginning, Patterson was now a month further behind in her goal of playing VFL.
“Four weeks in I hadn’t played a game and I was still doing rehab and running laps,” recalls Patterson. “I didn’t know if I could do it but you’ve just got to give it all.”
Patterson made her Australian Rules debut in Darebin’s Division 1 side on May 15 against Pascoe Vale. She was best afield. In the next three matches, she was best afield twice more. At training after her Round 5 performance against La Trobe University (ironically enough), Darebin senior coach Jane Lange gave her the tap on the shoulder.
Patterson credits Lange’s patience and faith in her as one of the key factors in her growth as a footballer.
“It was really good of Jane to keep playing me around in different positions until I found where I was comfortable.”
Just under ten months after the epiphany that was Daisy Pearce’s speech, Patterson made her VFL debut in Round 9 against Knox. Her arrival was somewhat overshadowed in Darebin’s 184-point victory.
I was in my first year as the VFL Women’s reporter and remember watching Patterson start out on the half-back flank. You couldn’t tell she was in her first season as a footballer: her attack on the contest and ability to get her hands on the ball – a basketball skill that extrapolates neatly into footy - impressed.
She was never dropped after her debut, citing her Round 15 performance against St Kilda as the day she decided to “make a good push for the draft”.
“I played across half-back and through the midfield and I just felt really comfortable. I’ve always been a confidence player, so my skills started to come off more.”
After playing in Darebin’s 12-point Grand Final victory over Melbourne Uni in September and meeting both Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs, she was taken by the Demons with pick 104 in the inaugural AFL Women’s draft on October 12. And that’s how Brooke Patterson – the brilliant basketballer who walked away to pursue a new career on the back of a seven-minute speech – became an AFL player.
“People ask me if I miss basketball and I say no because I’m just loving football. Every time I leave here I’m just on a high. I love the girls, love the environment and all the facilities and the off-field staff, I just get the most out of myself.”
And she’s still playing alongside Daisy Pearce.
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