This is not a story Shannon Campbell shares often. As tears well in her eyes, she recalls how the death of her “No. 1 supporter” – her mother, Kerry – shaped an AFLW journey that spans a decade.

“I got a lot of my attributes from her, my dad tells me quite a bit,” the Brisbane Lions pioneer tells this masthead when recalling Kerry’s influence before she died of cancer 17 years ago.

“At no point was she ever like, ‘I can’t do that because I’m sick.’ She was always, ‘Yep, I’ll take you here, I’ll take you there.’

“I often talk to her out on the field – if I’m in my head, I’ll just be like, ‘Hey mum, I need some help,’ and things will change.

“It’s quite cool that there’s, like, a higher being almost, that she looks over and helps to push me and keeps me wanting to get more out of myself.”

With teammates Ally Anderson and Bre Koenen, Campbell is among the competition’s 51 inaugural players who remain active in its 10th year.

From the Lions’ cafe in Springfield, Anderson says she feared a pre-paid overseas trip would cost her the AFLW’s launch.

She remembers the first club-wide get-together between the men’s and women’s squads – former Lions chief executive Greg Swann manning the barbecue – before gushing at the calibre of rookie prospects entering the Den with an entire junior career behind them.

“I just remember taking photos of the change rooms at the end of the season, thinking this will never happen again, and just trying to soak it up,” Anderson says.

“The first couple of years we had a lot of girls from other sports, but you can see now it’s starting to turn. Those girls we drafted this year, they were about eight when we started playing, so they’ve had a career to aspire to.

“They’ve got great footy brains, their skills are elite, and it’s going to continue.”

As Anderson dashes to a physio session, Campbell shares her story – beginning with her mum’s tennis history and rapport with former world No.1 Pat Rafter, and culminating in the bold gamble that pried her from American college soccer.

The AFLW was initially due to launch in 2020, and Campbell suspected by the time it kicked off, the younger generation would have surpassed her. A call from Lions coach Craig Starcevich changed that.

“Soccer was never really a full passion for me – it got me to where I wanted to be. I always wanted to be an elite athlete, but there wasn’t really a pathway at the time for AFLW,” Campbell says.

“I still think that if Craig wasn’t our coach at the time, I don’t know if I’d actually get an AFLW contract.”

Growing up in north Queensland – alongside her sister, Australian netballer Cara Koenen – Koenen recounts road trips to Cairns from the time she was 13 to play with other girls, while training with the boys at the Hermit Park Tigers, without the thought of the sport becoming a career.

“Cara played early days. There’s still this one photo of us playing for Magnetic Island Magpies that had all my siblings in it … but she broke her collarbone, so that’s a hard one to come back from,” Koenen says.

“The fact young girls now look up to us, and we can inspire the next generation of female footballers, is pretty special.”

Koenen remembers the 2019 AFLW grand final, when Adelaide lifted the trophy in front of 53,000 spectators, as a moment she felt a revolution was in the works – faith reaffirmed by the Australia-Ireland clash last weekend.

“They’re already talking about having it over in Ireland over the next couple of years, just with the success of the whole weekend – internationally and domestically,” she says.

“You’d be crazy not to look into rep games. It sets it apart from other competitions and is something completely unique.”

Campbell smiles when she ponders what Kerry would think if she could have seen where the AFLW’s trailblazers have taken the game. But she takes a determined tone when asked where it needs to grow in the next decade.

The trio agrees season lengths must increase to have every club face each other once – the current 12-round, 18 team campaign risks leaving them never knowing how balanced team talent is.

Under the terms of the code’s collective bargaining agreement, a 14-round season clause could be triggered for 2027 should match attendance average 6000 fans, and average television audiences reach 100,000 viewers.

Anderson calls on players to be more open sharing their personal stories to relate to fans and help inspire that growth. Campbell suggests more representative fixtures – a state-versus-state concept, or players playing Gaelic football in Ireland – could generate intrigue.

Koenen believes more can be done to improve game-day experiences, highlighting the code’s strength attracting first-time attendees, but lamenting retention as an issue.

Each feels funding for full-time coaching and health staff must be a priority to assist players in producing a more enthralling product.

While Koenen feels changing fan perceptions yearning for high-scoring affairs is a challenge – AFLW teams average 41 points a game compared with about 90 in the men’s – Anderson is adamant the grassroots pathways, which recorded a 45 per cent increase to 144,000 participants between 2022 and 2025, would address that.

“The footy IQ has been the biggest thing we’ve seen over the last three or four years. The kids coming through know how to play and know how to play different structures,” Anderson says.

“AFLW in its own right is so different to the men’s game at the moment. We have different fans, and different people come along to our games,” Koenen adds.

“I think we’re now trying to find that balance of skilful, hard, cracking in contests.”

The AFLW season launches on Sunday, August 9.