Melbourne Demons captain Kate Hore is only 30 years old, but such has been the breakneck evolution of the AFLW that she sounds like her career began in a bygone era.

“My process of how I ended up at Melbourne was obviously completely different to the AFLW draft process nowadays,” says Hore. “There was no draft night. There was a meeting with your list manager behind a tree at the peanut farm.”

It is more old-timey than it sounds. The “peanut farm” is Peanut Farm Reserve, a St Kilda-based training track where Hore has practised time trials.

And the list manager? That’s Todd Patterson, who is to the new documentary Forged In Red & Blue what Billy Beane was to Moneyball.

Throughout the 20-minute runtime, Patterson is seen as a list manager who is “scary”, progressive, and as likely to pose needling questions over a dinner table as he is to fly the length of the country to play mini golf with you, which he does with the Demons’ star recruit, Molly O’Hehir.

Patterson is also Tassie-bound, leaving the Demons in May to head up recruiting and list management at the Tasmania Devils‘ AFLW expansion franchise, which will surely be the most talked-about start-up in Australian women’s sports.

This makes Forged In Red & Blue particularly illuminating, not only serving as a preview to season 10 of AFLW, but as a time capsule-like document that shows a bridge between eras in the AFLW.

On one end, there is Hore. On the other, O’Hehir. In exclusive pre-draft footage, Patterson identifies O’Hehir as “[expletive] competitive and she plays with an edge”.

“I think we miss [that edge], I think we need more of an edge,” Patterson says, scrolling through highlights with the draft selection panel. “Like, at times she’s borderline nasty… there’s a little bit of magic about her as a person.”

With 2022 premiership star Lily Mithen being traded to the Gold Coast, which is also detailed in Forged In Red & Blue, Patterson and the Demons were able to draft O’Hehir with the third overall pick in the 2024 AFLW draft.

It signals a new era of Demons football, as the club marches on without Patterson pulling the recruiting strings, looking for its second AFLW premiership.

“This is the next chapter of the Demon’s spirit,” says AFLW player Saraid Taylor, reading aloud, at the club’s preseason camp. “And it starts now.”

Forged In Red & Blue is now available to watch here.