AN unlucky break made for an awkward moment at this year’s 2022 Central Victorian Football League women’s awards night in Bendigo recently, with Swan Hill’s Megan Williamson sharing the league best-and-fairest award with Castlemaine’s Meg Ginnivan.
Williamson, who plays with the Bendigo Thunder, was tied on 23 votes alongside Williamson, after polling in eight of the 18 home-and-away matches for the season, including seven best-on-ground performances.
Williamson needed to poll the maximum number of votes in the final match of the season against Castlemaine in order to tie with Ginnivan, which she duly did in the Thunder’s one-point win.
Williamson later told The Guardian the final result came as quite a shock.
“Because they stopped showing the progressive scores, I didn’t know where I was at,” Williamson said.
“When I polled the three votes in the last game, I knew I was close, but it was still a bit of a shock because my maths were struggling to keep up with it all.
“It was nice to be there with all my teammates and to share it with them, I’m certainly very proud and humbled to share it with Meg as well – it was a great honour.”
While their victory in the final game also secured the Thunder a top-four berth, it wasn’t the only dramatic moment to come out of the match for Williamson, with the midfielder breaking her foot.
The moment that ended Williamson’s season came from a tackle inside the last two minutes of the game by Ginnivan.
“Unfortunately for me, Meg was on the better end of that tackle,” Williamson later joked.
“It was a bit of an ironic ending to the night to share the best and fairest with her – I don’t think either of us knew what to say or whether to make a joke about it or not, but it was all smiles at the end because we were pretty happy to share it with it each other.
“I’m pretty honoured to be considered in the same vein as Meg. She’s incredibly talented and we’ve actually built up a really good friendship after playing interleague earlier in the season.”
Williamson started her footballing journey with the Woorinen Youth Girls football team in the then fledgling side’s first season, before later going on to play with Williamstown in the VFLW competition.
After falling out of love with the game at the end of the 2021 season, Williamson decided to go back to grassroots level, a move clearly proving to be a positive for her game.
“I didn’t really put a lot of pressure on my footy this year after coming back from VFL – the focus really was more about enjoying my footy again,” Williamson said.
“I probably started a little bit slow at the start of the year, which I think naturally happens when you come into a new team and you’re still finding where you fit into the team.
“Once I started to click with my teammates, we sort of got the ball rolling and played some really good footy – it was a credit to the them that we had such a great second half of the season.”
Williamson was also named in the 2022 CVFLW team of the year in the centre, along with the Kerang women’s team’s Jessica Searle, who was named on the interchange. While Williamson’s unlucky break will heal and her footballing journey will continue next season, she also paid particular thanks to the club where her journey first started.
“The Woorinen Girls team are the only reason I’m playing footy – if it hadn’t have been for Woorinen being proactive and forming a team, then I probably would have never even played the game,” Williamson said.
“Before then, I hadn’t had much too do much with football, other than watching my brother play or watching it on the TV – it was Woorinen starting that made me think I would give it a go.”
