Captain Kelly ready for another run in growing NRLW limelight
Newly crowned Sydney Roosters skipper Isabelle Kelly is as excited as ever to show exactly why the NRL Women’s Premiership is fast becoming a must for football fans and sports fanatics – and to win a second title along the way. she hopes.
Kelly, 25, has been at the top of the league since its inception in 2018.
Even before that, she tore it up in women’s football. She made her debut for the Jillaroos just two years after debuting at the age of 18. She is a central figure on the NSW team and was crowned World’s Best Player in the first year of the Golden Boot Gong competition. She is no stranger to success.
But now that the 2022 NRLW season begins, the success she’s chasing isn’t individual praise or even a league title – although a second after the 2021 win would be nice, she admits. Instead, it proves, as it has consistently done over the past half decade, that NRLW is an ever-evolving force.
“It was a huge thing for me [to show] in recent years,” she said.
Kelly has endured injuries, a disastrous move to the St. George Illawarra Dragons in 2019 and of course all the unwarranted attacks that women’s sports are suffering in the early 2020s. All of this drives her.
“Now I use all of that as motivation and drive to become a better player. I know what I’m capable of and what I can do and I just want to show that,” she told NRL media.
“There are a lot of people out there who don’t think we should play rugby league but I think we show that in every NRLW season, every Origin game and every Test match.”
For the first time, Kelly also wears a new title – Champion.
The Roosters managed to defeat Kelly’s other NRLW team, the Dragons, in a thrilling NRL Women’s Grand Final in New South Wales earlier this year in the crowning moment of the delayed 2021 season. It was the first time a Queen team outside of the Brisbane Broncos had won the NRLW Trophy.
It draws a new challenge for the tricolor skipper and her Sydney teammates; They already have a target painted on their backs as a “team to beat.”
Kelly can’t wait for each of the six rounds of the competition.
“I think it will be good for us to use that as motivation. We were written off pretty early last season,” said the Gosford-born star.
“The pressure comes with winning a Premiership but personally I love pressure. We lost a few girls but we got some new recruits and overall I think it’s a really good team. Everyone is humble and willing to learn and become even better than us.
“I think we will still be very strong competitors.”