New Adelaide AFLW Senior Coach Ryan Davis still remembers the moment his phone lit up with the call he’d been hoping for.
After years of building his coaching credentials and investing in the growth of the women’s game, leading his own team in the national league was an opportunity he had long worked toward.
And the significance of being able to usher the Crows into a new era hit him instantly.
“Unbridled joy is how I can best answer (how I felt),” Davis said.
“It’s very exciting, it’s been a dream of mine for quite a while to be able to head up a program and to be able to be at the Adelaide Crows is seriously a dream come true.
“The thought of being able to come to such an exciting program, a benchmark program of the competition of the past 10 years, was really appealing to me.
“I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to lead this playing group and this coaching staff into a new era.”
For the past two years Davis has been in charge of the Lions midfield, following a women’s football coaching career that began in 2020 when he was appointed the inaugural coach of Southport.
He led the Sharks to Queensland Football Association premierships in 2020 and 2021, and then a runner-up finish when they entered the QAFL women’s competition in 2022.
Davis has also served as the senior assistant coach of Queensland’s women’s state team and prior to pursuing coaching, he played 35 AFL games for West Coast and Gold Coast.
The 36-year-old said the knowledge and insight he’d gained across the past 14 years of coaching had built a strong platform for his next step.
“Southport started their women’s program in 2020 and from then on, I just wanted to coach,
“I loved coaching, I loved seeing the development of players and seeing players have that ‘light bulb’ moment is very rewarding,” Davis said.
“Being involved in starting the program at Southport from the ground up, going through the process of the list build, the culture, the values, the integrity, and also closely watching Craig Starcevich go about his business at Brisbane, I think that holds me in really good stead to be able to lead the next era here.
“What really drew me to this role is the list dynamic - there’s some really good veterans in the 26, 27 and 28-year-old mark, there’s a really strong core of hardened, seasoned finals players.
“There’s also some really good young players coming through, as well.”
While the coming weeks will be spent learning the list and refining plans for 2026, one Crows star is already a familiar face to Davis.
After leaving West Coast, he crossed to Swan Districts in the WAFL where a young Chelsea Randall was tearing up the track.
“I met Chelsea when she was working at the front desk at Swan Districts and still training alongside us boys and running rings around some of the fellas out there.
“We did a lot of work together with community camps and things like that, so to be able to see Chelsea was a really cool full-circle moment from when I met her at Swan Districts.
“To be able to reconnect at this level is pretty cool.”
Adelaide’s AFLW side’s 2025 campaign ended with a semi-final loss to Melbourne last month, and Davis said he was looking forward to laying the foundations for the next phase of the program.
“I’ll talk to the players and the staff at more length in the coming weeks and the coming months about how our program will look and what our game style will be,” Davis said.
“You can see the game is getting faster and faster, with a less amount of stoppages and a more transition game, so those things will certainly be taken into consideration in 2026.
“We can’t sit there and rest on our laurels, we’ve got to keep evolving and figuring out how we close the gap - I’ve got a fair few ideas - and I’m looking forward to hearing the players’ and the other coaches’ perspective on that so we can build something in the coming months.
“As coaches, we have a responsibility to uphold in terms of how the game looks, so I’d like to play an attractive, exciting brand of football that our players love to play and our fans love to watch.”
