As Richmond embarks on its inaugural AFLW season, the players will be taking Tiger fans on the journey with them as they share their experiences. Today, midfielder Grace Campbell details the final training week of 2019...

We’ve now had our last training session of 2019 and it’s hard to believe we’re halfway through the pre-season.

It’s already been a Christmas to remember, having been a part of Christmas at Tigerland this year for the first time.

It was such a fun night and another history-making event for the Club. To join forces with the men's side, run out together and hit the training track as a collective was such a special experience.

We commenced the session with a joint team meeting starting with some icebreaker activities, which was pretty funny. We then got out on the track and did some drills together, pairing up with the AFL player we share a guernsey number with.

There were some really cool opportunities for education and the girls were really happy that the boys invested in the session and gave us some really good tips.

Hopefully going forward, we can do more with the men’s program because we benefitted a lot from it. It’s nice to have common themes between the two programs and for the men's team to share their knowledge, we were really grateful for that.

Tuesday was a solid session and it was also nice to get to know the boys on a more personal level. We had a lot of fun and the boys were able to take a lot out of it too.

Christmas at Tigerland also marked another great opportunity to get to know the Tiger Army. It was fantastic to see them show their support, it means a lot to the girls and makes us feel really special.

At our final session of the week on Saturday, we enjoyed some festive activities with some of the VFLW players, which was a great opportunity to get into the Christmas spirit before the break.

I think the break will be nice for us to recharge and spend some time with our families. A lot of the girls, including myself, have moved away from home to pursue their football. It’s a huge commitment, so I think we’ll all enjoy spending quality time with our loved ones over the break. 

In saying that, everyone’s pretty excited to get stuck into the pointy end of the pre-season.

The more time we spend with one another, the more connections we build and the tighter our culture becomes. Our recruit staff have done such a fantastic job, we’ve got some awesome young talent who have slipped straight into the playing group.

I think we’re really enjoying spending time with one another and are building something pretty special. I can’t wait to see what the second half of the pre-season and the rest of 2020 brings.