{"id":47096,"date":"2025-08-06T05:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T05:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/47096\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T05:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T05:44:10","slug":"sydney-aflw-captain-chloe-molloy-has-no-regrets-about-keeping-news-of-knee-injury-from-teammates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/47096\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney AFLW captain Chloe Molloy has no regrets about keeping news of knee injury from teammates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Superstar captain Chloe Molloy has declared herself fit for Sydney’s AFLW season opener, less than a year after tearing her ACL.<\/p>\n

And the dynamic forward has no regrets over Sydney’s foiled attempt to initially hide the extent of her injury.<\/p>\n

Molloy, 26, suffered the dreaded knee injury<\/a> at training in September 2024, just one game into last season.<\/p>\n

Now, she has next Friday’s match against Richmond at North Sydney Oval in her sights.<\/p>\n

AFLW has a crowd problem. Here’s how the league wants to fix it<\/a><\/p>\n

AFLW burst onto the scene nine years ago with a lockout crowd but since then, crowds have dwindled. Here’s how the league plans to get them back up.<\/p>\n

“I’m back in a position where I can be up for round one selection, which I’m stoked with, and that’s what I was always going to aim for,” Molloy told AAP.<\/p>\n

“I’m in a position to be playing fully fit, not restricted. I’m just itching to get out there.<\/p>\n

“I felt really at a loss on how to help the team last year.<\/p>\n

“Especially when you’re in a leadership position as well, and you’re someone that they turn to, it broke my heart that I couldn’t get out there.”<\/p>\n

Molloy jarred her knee at a Friday training session but believed it was innocuous. But scan results that Sunday morning, hours before Sydney’s clash with St Kilda, delivered the worst possible news.<\/p>\n

\"Chloe<\/p>\n

Molloy helped Sydney as a pseudo assistant coach during her injury spell last season. (AAP: Morgan Hancock)<\/p>\n

When news broke that she had torn her ACL, both Molloy and Sydney initially denied it, not wanting to distract her teammates.<\/p>\n

“Especially as a captain, I’m not going to do anything to jeopardise the performance of my team, and that’s the overarching thing for me,” Molloy said.<\/p>\n

“I can totally respect what people need to know.<\/p>\n

“But for me, in the position that I was, I needed to do everything I could for my team to win, and that for me was the decision to not tell them.<\/p>\n

“So I don’t have any regrets about it.”<\/p>\n

Molloy is reaping the rewards of her obsessive approach to rehab.<\/p>\n

“From day one, I wanted to get back as soon as I could,” she said.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

“So it dictated my life. On one hand, it was really good, because I was so tedious and diligent with my rehabbing.<\/p>\n

“(But) it genuinely probably drove me insane.”<\/p>\n

While injured, Molloy also completed a player development wellbeing course, and is trying to become better at finding balance and being present.<\/p>\n

Molloy was one of the best players in the league before her injury and she and coach Scott Gowans believe she can quickly return to those heights<\/p>\n

“I’ve done everything I can to put myself in this position,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Scotty said before I played match sim for the first time: ‘We’ve recognised it. Staff have recognised it. Players now see it, and now it’s time for the world to see it.'”<\/p>\n

The Swans are thinking big too.<\/p>\n

“We want to be a finals team,” Molloy said.<\/p>\n

“And we’re not going to shy away from it.”<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Superstar captain Chloe Molloy has declared herself fit for Sydney’s AFLW season opener, less than a year after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[25912,64,63,40356,85,7200],"class_list":["post-47096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-aflw","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chloe-molloy","tag-sports","tag-sydney-swans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47096","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=47096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}