Tanya Hetherington: How to Win When You Lose
- May 17, 2017
- 4 min read
On August 20 of last year, Diamond Creek coach Tanya Hetherington stood arm-in-arm with her team in the middle of Box Hill City Oval and cried.
Diamond Creek had just fallen to the Eastern Devils in the final match of the VFL Women's home and away season. Not that it mattered, as it had been a dead rubber. In her first season as VFL Women’s coach, Hetherington’s side had missed finals after playing off for the previous four premierships thanks to an injury run so horrific that one half expected Quentin Tarantino to turn up and roll the cameras.
It was a sad end to what had been the most challenging twelve months of Hetherington’s career. She had ruptured her left ACL in Diamond Creek’s 2015 preliminary final win over Melbourne Uni and decided to take the position of senior coach vacated by Brad Lederman at season’s end. The football Gods conspired against her and her team, with injuries and the unavailability of their home ground of Plenty Park denying the Creekers any stability. In October, she was overlooked in the inaugural AFL Women’s draft.
It was a hand of bad luck that could have broken Hetherington’s spirit. Instead, she has absorbed every harsh lesson, every stolen chance and every setback and pushed it out to claw her way back.
“My mantra was, keep positive,” says Hetherington.
“I’d thought about taking up coaching somewhere down the track once I’d finished playing but it wasn’t something I’d planned to do so soon.”
Hetherington joined Diamond Creek in 2008. The team that she would coach, train and inevitably discipline was the same one with which she had shared the blood, sweat and tears of a change room for nearly a decade. The same people who had been friends, teammates and confidantes were now subjects. The elephant in the room was whether a first-season coach would be able to put aside her friendships with old teammates when she took the reins.
“I had spoken to a fair few people about whether I should do it,” admits Hetherington, who turned to former Richmond coach Jeff Gieschen for counsel throughout the season. “And the girls said that I had the respect and that they would support me.
“There’s a lot of players who have been there for a long time and there’s been times where we’ve had to sit down in the past and have hard conversations so that wasn’t something I was worried about having to do.”
The numbers from Diamond Creek’s 2016 injury toll are staggering. Only two players played every game. They used 40 players including 12 senior debutants (only the bottom-placed Knox Falcons, granted permission by AFL Victoria to bring in Youth Girls from different competitions, used more). They never played their best 22.
Considering all this, it might be assumed that the Creekers capitulated early in the season. However, that would be to underestimate the fighting spirit and belief that Hetherington fostered among her side. It wasn’t until their Round 16 loss to the St Kilda Sharks that the door was finally closed on their finals chances.
So when the team stood arm-in-arm at Box Hill City Oval, Hetherington’s tears were not of lament.
“I told the girls that we’d been through everything, we’d taken everything that could be thrown at us and that I couldn’t have been more proud to be associated with that group of players. It galvanised us,” says Hetherington.
After sitting through the entire national draft and watching any faint hope of being selected as a free agent slowly fade, Hetherington watched the AFL Women’s season as just another spectator. However, she certainly had plenty of teammates to support: Diamond Creek had the equal highest number of draftees with 15.
“It was great to see so many Creekers get drafted and it was kind of a validation that I’d been on the right path with what I was doing,” says Hetherington. “And they all inspired me, I looked at Katie Loynes who had come back from the same injury with the same amount of time out of the game as me and how well she played.”
Hetherington relinquished the coaching position to Carlton forward coach Scott Gowans late in 2016. In the week leading up to her beloved team’s Round 1 clash with Seaford, Hetherington was named as co-captain alongside Steph Chiocci.
“To have Scott, who had just come to the club, think that I was captain material was an honour, but to me, ‘captain’ is just a title. We have so many quality leaders at the club and everyone has an important role to play.”
607 days after her ACL injury, she ran out for Round 1 and everything came flooding back. After being a relentless test for so long, she had rediscovered the spark that made footy fun again.
“I’ll probably cry when I kick my first goal,” she laughs.
So the tears will fall, again. But Tanya Hetherington has made those tears sing a different tune.
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