It’s my first Renegades training and I’m out of my element. I’m a 32 year old woman, I’m incredibly unfit, I’m really nervous; but playing footy is an itch I’ve wanted to scratch since I was 12 years old.

We warm-up. Great. I can do this – easy, I think to myself.

Then the lane work begins. ‘Here, Here, Here.’ I’m getting screamed at; handballing the footy as best I can. Running back and forth, the players are yelling all at once, a flurry of excitement to get your hands on the ball and have a go.

I line up for kick and it’s a good one, solid. Thank God, I think to myself.

From four lanes away I hear Clare Woodhouse, Captain of the Brunswick Renegades, yell out

“Good Kick, Sam!”

How did she even see that?

It’s been a long wait for Clare Woodhouse to play her 250th game, and COVID-19 has made that wait even longer.

Clare Woodhouse didn’t grow up with a footy in her hand. At 14, she joined Box Hill Football Club. At 14, she was playing in the big league, against women in their 20s and 30’s because there was nowhere else to play.

She had to be tough on and off the field. Fighting with the many men’s teams in 1997 for training space, spare uniforms and even footballs, it seemed; there was no space for women to play footy, with only eight clubs with women’s teams in Victoria. Interrupted pathways to playing footy from AusKick to Seniors meant many girls had to give up the game in their early teens. That’s slowly changing; through the early 2000’s, Clare witnessed an increase to 30-40 clubs with women’s teams in Victoria. Seeing the sport grow has been a pleasure for her.

In 2001, Box Hill Football Club folded, and Clare had to find a new team. That’s when she joined Melbourne University Football Club – the MUGARS. She always hated being called a girl at Box Hill. Finally, she was playing at a Women’s club. The players were passionate, they dealt with what they had at their disposal, they paved the way for the new players, those who would then go on to play AFLW. The MUGARS – and all women’s clubs in the VWFL – were building the momentum needed to create something bigger, to create a professional women’s league.

Clare joined the MUGARS whilst studying early childhood education at Melbourne Uni. The juggle between studying, footy and work was good at the start, but after five years with back to back injuries, footy was impacting her adult life. She was working as a primary school teacher and balancing footy and teaching wasn’t stacking up. A broken leg, fingers, arm and a fair few broken noses, the injuries were getting too much. In 2012, Clare called in quits. The intensity of training and playing was too much and a tough decision had to be made.

For two years, Clare really missed the game. She wanted to play again but needed something a little different in a club. A team that were more mates than footy players, a team that took the game on but also had a recognition for work life balance.

In 2014, the Brunswick Renegades was formed and slowly, the news began to spread around town. The first Renegades training had six players. Some games had hardly enough players to fill the side. If players got injured, the team almost had to forfeit halfway through.

The Renegades trained with the boys in the corner of the field, borrowed their uniforms, made do with what they could get their hands on. It was like Box Hill all over again. What started off slow, soon expanded into something bigger than expected. By the end of 2016, the team was getting too big; it needed to be split in two, introducing a Reserves team and Clare was not keen. Her small team was expanding faster than she wanted; she bit her tongue; growth was a good thing. The Renegades and NOBSPC officially merged as Brunswick Football Club.

It wasn’t until 2018 that Clare was named captain, and that’s where she’s stayed. Not a natural talker, she’s the kind of captain that stands back, gives guidance when needed but lets the team do their thing.

Seeing her on the field is like watching a person defy gravity. Clare smashes through the pack at a 90-degree angle, swiftly crumbs up the ball and delivers it to the forward line. Every move is a carefully thought out decision, she reads the game like a worn-out book. Her years of playing gives her experience like no other, she’s done more than just play the game in the Renegades, she helped create the game for the club.

A Prep teacher during the week, a Renegades Captain on the weekend, football with the Renegades fits in nicely with her lifestyle and strangely after 250 games, Clare still gets nervous every Saturday. Her weekend routine ‘Rev Up’ to her team is mostly ad-libbed, and that’s just the way the club likes it.

‘We’re a club where you can jump in at any time, where you can learn from scratch, pick up where you left off or simply have a crack.’

Like the little preps looking up to Clare in the classroom, so do the Renegades. A team full of people from diverse countries and backgrounds, this isn’t a group of professional athletes that hardly know each other but a group of players who connect inside and outside of footy and make it a part of their life.

When asked when she’ll give up, Clare tells us, she’ll play until her body is out. Judging from her performance this year, she’s got years and years ahead of her, there’s no slowing down.

Proud to play for a team that aren’t girls, aren’t woman but are Renegades, Clare tells us it’s been a pleasure to watch not only her local team grow but every club within Melbourne.

That growth has also included the Renegades becoming a proudly diverse space; no longer a women’s team but simply the ‘Brunswick Renegades’, the team has transformed from six players on a corner of a field to two teams of close footy friends in the Brunswick Football Club.

There have never been 250 games neatly laid out for Clare to play. She created those games for herself, for her teammates and for her community. And as she runs out onto the field for her 250th, surrounded by her teammates, her friends and her family, we thank her for creating a club that is truly Brunswick, inside and out.