Photo: Flickerd via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped. This adapted image is also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Erin Phillips is a premiership player for the third time. Adelaide beat Melbourne 4.5 (29) to 2.4 (16) in the AFLW Grand Final at Adelaide Oval today, in front of a home crowd of 16,712.
Phillips started in the center square with Anne Hatchard and Ebony Marinoff, and Melbourne sent Tyla Hanks to tag her all afternoon. She still found a way. In the second quarter she snapped Adelaide's second goal, the 50th of her AFLW career. Hatchard took the best-on-ground medal, and Danielle Ponter's third-quarter goal kept the Demons at arm's length.
This one means a lot. Phillips was best on ground in the 2017 and 2019 Grand Finals, but tore her ACL in the third quarter three years ago and was stretchered off the same ground. At 36 she has now played in all three of Adelaide's flags, and she played 11 games this season up forward and through the midfield.
Phillips, a dual Olympian and two-time WNBA champion before she switched codes, gave up meat and dairy years ago. She told VegKit:
Since I gave up meat, dairy products and a lot of processed sugars, my energy levels have increased significantly because my body doesn't waste energy burning these types of food, and it allows me to sleep much better at night.
For a player who has come back from two ACL injuries, sleep and recovery aren't small things. Phillips has spent her career proving she can do it all, as a dual-sport professional and now as a three-time AFLW premiership player, and she does it on a plant-based plate.
We were there for flag number two, when Phillips won her second premiership and best-on-ground medal in 2019. She's part of a wave of plant-based players in contact sport, from the 252lb rugby international who went vegan to the Tennessee Titans players who went plant-based.
Three flags. Powered by plants.