JAS FERGUSON broke her hand over the off-season playing netball for her old local club, Ellinbank.

But the newly minted North Melbourne premiership key back has now confirmed that the Roos hierarchy may not have exactly been told she was going to take to the court, believing instead she was just taking on a coaching role.

While AFLW teams are generally more lenient than their AFL counterparts when it comes to playing other sports in the much longer off-season (especially given the large number of Irish players returning home for Gaelic football), permission is still required.

Ferguson underwent surgery in the off-season, but didn't miss an official pre-season session.

"The flag covers it up a bit, makes my pre-season not look quite as bad," she told AFL.com.au, somewhat sheepishly.

"There were a few blurry lines. I do love my netball. There was a lack of transparency, but hopefully this makes up for it and 'Crock' (coach Darren Crocker) doesn't think about it. 

"It became a running joke for a while."

Ferguson was drafted as a somewhat mature-age player, plucked out of Collingwood's VFLW side at age 22 by the Roos with pick No.51 in 2021. Only 59 players were taken in that particular pool, with 14 teams in the mix at the time.

Having played in four of North Melbourne's seven seasons, she's now well and truly part of the furniture, forming an integral part of an astonishingly stingy backline.

The Roos held Brisbane to just nine points – seven of which came via a down-field free kick and a 50m penalty – which is the mighty Lions' second-lowest AFLW score.

The backline conceded just one solitary mark inside 50, against a forward line boasting twin towers Dakota Davidson and Taylor Smith.

"It hasn't sunk in, but god it feels unreal. I think it was almost the best we've played as a whole team. Obviously we didn't put that much on the scoreboard, but we won fairly easily," Ferguson said.

"The emotion in it, the connection – even the little things, the smothers, the little spoils, everything like that we celebrated. It was so unreal, the feeling was crazy.

"It's reward for hard work. It's been an absolute journey, 'Crock' always talks about that. It's been multiple seasons now where we've just fallen short at that final hurdle. 

"We've always been that outside team – there's been the top three, and we've never been part of that. We've always wanted to prove that we deserve to be here, to be on the biggest stage and hopefully this cements us as a really solid team."

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