WITH Andrew Dillon named as CEO-elect of the AFL, Laura Kane has moved into the role as acting general manager of footy operations.

Already the general manager of competition management, Kane's journey to the top level of the League has been a unique one.

A chance encounter with the Melbourne University Football Club formed a connection that would ultimately result in Kane's 2021 appointment as the AFL's general manager of competition management. 

"I was walking home (from school) with my backpack… and I saw women kicking a football," Kane told the League Leaders podcast.  

"I remember going straight home and saying to my mum, you have to come with me. You have to come and see that there are women playing. So that was my connection to Melbourne Uni." 

Kane joined the club while in year seven at high school and spent some years simply training, unable to play because there was no youth girls team, but eventually would become a powerful centre half forward, then coach and administrator. 

All the while, Kane was finishing up her studies to become a personal injury lawyer, which included representing victims in the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse. 

"Finishing school, I actually did work experience at the Supreme Court, I was with Victoria Legal Aid. I was 16 years old," Kane said. 

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"It was quite a full on week, a full on trial, and now looking back, I was probably quite young to be experiencing all of that, but left thinking 'this is exactly what I want to do, I love this, this is amazing, it's interesting'. And I think that then realising that I had some sense or strong sense of justice or fairness and went on to study law for four years.  

"I then went on to work as a junior solicitor at a firm called Waller Legal. Dr Vivienne Waller was the principal solicitor of that firm and she was doing such amazing and important work through the institutional Royal Commission into child abuse, institutional responses. So I got a really great important experience in such a hard area and such an awful, awful space for many people but rewarding at the same time." 

A career in footy wasn't always part of the plan, but that lingering connection to Melbourne Uni threw up some opportunities that in the end, were too good to pass up. 

"The connection with Melbourne Uni and the North Melbourne Football Club is an amazing connection and a long standing one at that. So Sonja Hood, who is Dr. Sonja Hood, who is obviously now the president, was heading up The Huddle (North Melbourne's community arm) and tells the story around many football clubs reaching out to the North Melbourne Football Club for access to things like the oval and the facilities as you could expect. And she recounts the women's team at Melbourne Uni being one of the first to offer up something in exchange," Kane explained. 

"For instance, they offered up their time to volunteer with the young people at The Huddle in education programs as repayment I guess for access to the oval, so we were training there and playing and preparing for the weekend at Arden Street of a night time before AFLW and VFLW existed in its current form.  

"So that's where the connection started. And my connection grew even more closely through Carl Dilena, who was CEO at the time, who asked for some help and advice around applying for an AFLW license into that inaugural year of the competition. Obviously the Kangaroos wanted a team, were ultimately unsuccessful, but that was the start of I guess my connection to the club and then my employment with them." 

A couple of years later when the Kangaroos were awarded a license to join the AFLW, it was Kane that the club targeted to head up its women's program, which meant a hard decision to make on Kane's part. 

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"The work that I was doing was so important and meaningful, it was hard, but it was really rewarding because you knew you were helping people... It was unique because football I loved equally outside of work. And so when my hobby or what I did for fun became an opportunity to, it was professionalised. I could turn that hobby into my job. I felt like I couldn't say no," she said.

Throughout the episode, Kane also touches on the experience of working through COVID, being part of a hub, the abrupt end to the 2020 AFLW season and the move to one of the highest positions at the AFL.