\n Inspiring midfielder going from strength to strength.\n <\/p>\n
For most footballers \u2013 and especially ones on the verge of achieving the elite level \u2013 an ACL tear at the age of 30 would pose the kind of career questions no one wants to ponder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Georgia Nanscawen\u00a0isn\u2019t like most footballers.<\/p>\n
In a league that understandably has its lens fixed on a young talent pool that continues to grow with each passing year, it shouldn\u2019t be understated how impressive Nanscawen\u2019s improvement has been in what would typically serve as the twilight of most careers.<\/p>\n
Since being signed as Essendon\u2019s inaugural AFLW player in 2022 even after that knee injury, Nanscawen has managed to get better year-on-year and at the age of 33, is arguably in as rich a vein of form as any inside midfielder in the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
External recognition came last year in the form of a berth in the provisional All-Australian squad of 42 after averaging 24 touches (13 contested) over the course of 10 games, kicking off a run that has continued into 2025.<\/p>\n
Across the opening month this season, Nanscawen is pulling in a career-best 27 disposals per game \u2013 of those, nine are coming from ground ball gets, with her average of 14 contested possessions good for sixth best in the league.<\/p>\n
Nanscawen racked up a career-high 32 touches and a whopping 15 tackles for 141 fantasy points in defeat to Geelong on Sunday, a workhorse in a Bombers midfield that were challenged all day.<\/p>\n
A 10-vote performance from round three\u2019s Dreamtime in Darwin fixture elevated Nanscawen to an outright No.1 in the AFLCA AFLW Champion Player of the Year leaderboard (where she now currently sits in the top four), reminding the W community of her standing as a legitimate A-grader.<\/p>\n
Following Dreamtime, Nanscawen acknowledged the confidence she\u2019s taken out of her form, but she isn\u2019t one to get too caught up in individual accolades.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is nice to feel confident. It\u2019s just the belief to do what I can do,\u201d Nanscawen told essendonfc.com.au.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe group around me and the coaching group have given me a lot of confidence to play my game and I don\u2019t need to be anyone different but me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c(I\u2019m) rolling with that. I just love gameday, getting to run out with the group and the belief we\u2019re building is really special.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the rotation of youngsters such as Amy Gaylor and Grace Belloni into the middle has bolstered the Bombers\u2019 on-ball brigade, it\u2019s also allowed the former Hockeyroo\u2019s inside game to stand out even more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a one-two punch with Maddy Prespakis, Nanscawen has been able to play almost exclusively in-and-under and has powered her side\u2019s mostly impressive start to its fourth campaign in the league.<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t the first time Bomber fans have taken kindly to a No.5 in long sleeves, and should Nanscawen continue this form into the back end of the year, there\u2019s every chance she could find herself on the receiving end of awards befitting of that comparison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inspiring midfielder going from strength to strength. For most footballers \u2013 and especially ones on the verge of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":["post-129278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}