Mayo footballer Sarah Rowe has agreed to join Women's AFL side Collingwood.
Rowe will follow in the footsteps of Cora Staunton who lined out for Great Western Sydney Giants last season and will again do so in 2019.
"Last year, after the All-Ireland final, I got an email from a guy in Australia saying he was impressed with my performance - I don't know what performance he was looking at!" Rowe told Midwest Radio.
"He asked if I would be interested in coming over and having a look.
"It was something that had never crossed my mind before because I didn't know too much about it. I said yeah and I'd be interested in having a conversation about it anyway."
Rowe travelled to Australia for two weeks, visiting Melbourne, North Melbourne, Geelong and Western Bulldogs along with Collingwood.
Marty Clarke, the former Down footballer who also played for Collingwood, got in touch as soon as he heard Rowe was heading Down Under.
He was all praise about Collingwood and it was nice to have an Irish opinion about the whole thing.
I had never kicked a ball before I went over. The coach of Collingwood taught me how to kick a ball quite quickly. He was very technical and I responded well to his coaching style.
They'd all done a lot of video analysis work on me. They'd looked at a lot of my games and had ideas for me and where I'd fit in; how they could transform me from a footballer to an AFL player.
Collingwood went that extra yard to acquire Rowe's services. She met the majority of her teammates - not just the odd one or two - and got on well with them; their professionalism impressed her. It also helped that they were the first club she visited - they opened a gap the rest could not close.
Rowe will make the move to Australia in the winter - November 1st is her travel date. In all, she will spend five months in Australia but aims to be back in Ireland to line out for Mayo in championship 2019.
Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
