Original AFLW Crow Sarah Allan might have joined the Club nine years ago, but it’s only now that she calls herself “a footballer”. 

Adelaide’s co-captain is set to start the 10th season of the competition with three premierships and three All-Australian blazers in her career’s rear-view mirror but has reached a new stage her younger self could not have foreseen.

This season, for the first time since 2016, Allan is not studying or working in between her football duties.

“For me, this year I get to put all my focus into being an athlete,” said Allan, who has played 83 AFLW games since 2017.

“It’s the first year I can just do football. So that is probably my biggest change, just getting to be a footballer, which is something I wasn't sure I'd ever get to experience.

“It's exciting. Even the training level is exciting. This preseason, I’ve really enjoyed the level we’ve been training at because you can see everything coming together a bit more.”

Allan said players could now focus on game education, skill repetition, fitness and recovery.

“You look back at the struggles of having to work and then look after your body; I think the biggest thing is now we get to be a lot more professional … making sure eating is our priority, making sure our training levels are a high priority,” she said. 

“Obviously we're not fully there yet but when you think about it, for only nine years later it’s pretty impressive where it is at.”

Other benefits of the AFLW’s first nine years include game development, exposure and growth at lower levels.

“I think people just had to wait for the game to evolve because now there is a path from Auskick to the highest level,” Allan said.

“If you look at the girls coming through and getting drafted now, they've come through a whole pathway through their juniors, to where they're ready to play.

“I think the people who saw that vision really understood it and got on board from the beginning.”

Nine years ago, Allan was an 18-year-old university student, who had left her Millicent home to live with her grandparents in Adelaide and play in the SAWFL with Salisbury, earning selection for South Australia. 

The possibility of a national women’s league was in her vision but even when Adelaide’s AFLW future was confirmed, she was one of more than 50 hopefuls dreaming, training and playing for an opportunity.

It was Adelaide or bust at the 2016 draft.

“I had had a lot of good history in junior state football but I never sort of really put a name for myself in the senior State team, and I didn’t get picked in the exhibition game (between Melbourne and Western Bulldogs),” Allan recalled. 

“Obviously the desire was there but didn't know if I was.”

It was a tense wait before she was Adelaide’s 16th pick of 18 called in the draft and joined a squad of players from across Australia, who trained hard under staff from the club’s AFL program under inaugural coach Bec Goddard.

“I definitely was still confident in my ability, because I'd grown up playing football I was up there with my skills,” she said. “I was still happy to get drafted but when you're the third to last pick, you're probably not confident in your place in the team.”

Allan, however, made the cut for Adelaide’s first AFLW game against GWS at Thebarton Oval and played in the winning 2017 grand final side.

Despite Allan’s appreciation of her new lifestyle, she values her contribution as a Crows pioneer. 

The key defender is one of five from the inaugural squad still on the club’s list for the 2025 season: Chelsea Randall, Ebony Marinoff, Anne Hatchard and Stevie-Lee Thompson, who also played with her in the first game, the first grand final and three premierships.

“You know, being a part of the first 2017 premiership, that's kind of priceless,” Allan said. 

“I don't think any of us will ever regret being a part of that era because we were part of the beginning. People will always remember who won the first ever one, so that’s cool.”