From knocking on doors to 200 games: Shellee's unstoppable journey
Meet Shellee Gibson | South Coast NSW Local Legend
In partnership with Toyota
How do you build a women's AFL team from scratch?
Just ask veteran full forward and former Women's Premier League soccer star Shellee Gibson, who decided 15 years ago it was time her native Wollongong had its own team in the Sydney competition.
She had no sponsorship, no uniforms, no venue, and only half a dozen players. Gibson had one option - roll up her sleeves and go knocking on doors.
"I started at Albion Park rail where all the car yards and shops were, then I went to Oak Flats," Gibson said.
"A few people felt sorry for me, the chiropractor in Oak Flats gave me a hundred dollars, the travel agent gave me a hundred dollars. I'm pretty sure we got the denture clinic to give us a couple of hundred bucks so people could go and get mouthguards.
"Then my mates that own J and J Truck Company at Port Kembla said here's a thousand bucks, we'll be the major sponsor.
"People were laughing at me, it was hard work. I did that for two weeks before I got enough money for rego, I think rego was 1200 bucks."
And so the Wollongong Saints were born.
Gibson drew some initial sketches that became the club's logo, borrowed some leftover jerseys from the Figtree under-14s boys and shifted her focus towards player recruitment.
"I just got all my soccer mates who lived in Sydney to just come and play," Gibson said.
"Every week we'd get one or two more people. We went around the uni and had a barbecue at lunchtime and gave out flyers to everyone, we only got one person from that.
"The first couple of games were just scratch matches because we didn't have enough, but the other teams helped us out. [Eventually] we got a full team and we ended up winning two games that season.
"The next season they put it into two leagues, and we won the second division with a bunch of soccer players and a bunch of people that have never played before."
Gibson's early graft ultimately paved the way for a Wollongong senior women's competition, which began in 2018 and is now administered by the AFL South Coast.
Her initial team has since morphed into the Figtree Saints, while Gibson now calls the Kiama Power home and has done so for the past four seasons.
The 43-year-old is set to notch her 200th senior game this season, and is showing no signs of slowing down as she continues to rack up leading goal kicker awards in her second sport as a top-league star.
"You get to touch the ball a bit more in soccer, the field's a quarter of the size, it's a bit more fluid whereas in footy the ball can bounce anywhere," Gibson said.
"You might only have the ball for one or two seconds a game and you've got to get rid of it. It's very hard, but when you're winning footy it's great.
"I could always kick, and I can run, I just don't like the tackling and the aggressiveness.
"I remember my first ever game was a trial game at Sydney Uni, in the uni, everyone was lovely. The ball came bouncing near me and I remember just walking backwards going 'nah, I don't do tackling'."
Discover more at Toyota's Good for Footy webpage.
- This content has been produced in partnership with Toyota
