Captain Kelly ready for another run in growing NRLW limelight

Newly-crowned Sydney Roosters skipper Isabelle Kelly is as eager as ever to showcase exactly why the NRL Women’s Premiership is fast becoming a must-watch spectacle for footy fans and sports fanatics alike—and win a second title on the way, she hopes.

Kelly, 25, has been at the pinnacle of the league since its 2018 inception.

Even before that, she’s been tearing it up in women’s footy. She made her debut for the Jillaroos just two years after her debut at 18. She’s a central figure in the New South Wales State of Origin team, and in the first year of the competition was crowned the world’s best player via the Golden Boot gong. She’s no stranger to success.

But now, as the 2022 NRLW season gets underway, the success she’s chasing isn’t individual plaudits, or even a league title—though a second one to follow 2021’s victory would be nice, she admits. Instead, it’s proving, as she has time and time again this past half-decade, that the NRLW is an ever-building force.

“That’s been a massive thing for me [to show] these past years,” she said.

Kelly has been through injury battles, a disastrous switch to join the St George Illawarra Dragons in 2019, and of course all the unjustified attacks women’s sport gets even in the early 2020s. It all drives her.

“I now use it all as motivation and drive, for me to be a better player. I know what I’m capable of and know what I can do and just want to showcase that,” she told NRL media.

“There’s a lot of people out there that don’t believe we should be playing rugby league but I think we’re showcasing that every NRLW season, every Origin game and every Test match.”

For the first time too, Kelly carries a new title—champion.

The Roosters managed to overcome Kelly’s other NRLW team, the Dragons, in a nail-biting all-New South Wales NRL Women’s grand final earlier this year in the crowning moment of the delayed 2021 season. It was the first time a queen-team outside the Brisbane Broncos lifted the NRLW trophy.

It paints a new challenge for the tricolours skipper and her Sydney teammates; a target is already painted on their backs as the ‘team to beat.’

Kelly can’t wait for that in each of the competition’s six rounds.

“I think it’s going to be good for us to use that as motivation. Last season we were written off quite early,” the Gosford-born star said.

“The pressure comes with winning a premiership but I personally love pressure. We’ve lost a few girls but we’ve got some new recruits and overall I think it’s a really good squad. Everyone is humble and willing to learn and be even better than what we were.

“I think we’re going to still be very strong contenders.”

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