THE NAB AFLW season is such an intense period, players would be forgiven for taking it easy over the off-season.

Instead, new Sydney recruit Lulu Pullar worked as a doctor in the emergency department of Alice Springs Hospital and created and ran a week-long football academy for girls in the red centre.

Pullar – who previously worked at Sunshine Hospital in Melbourne's west while playing for North Melbourne – took up a short-term contract to work in Alice Springs in between seasons.

"From a medicine side of things, I've always been really interested and passionate about working in Indigenous healthcare and among the Indigenous population. Alice presented a really good opportunity to be able to do that and learn and grow my skill set in that space," Pullar told AFL.com.au.

"I had a few colleagues who had worked out there and said really good things.

"I've had a few years (four seasons) in the system now, and been a doctor for a few years too. I've always played footy at the same time as being a doctor, so I don't know any different. But I had a lot of injuries (calf) in the past two years, and I thought I needed to change something in my performance and life off-field, to put myself in the best position physically.

"I thought if I can really work and indulge in medicine and upskill myself over the off-season period, when I'm back in Sydney, I can dedicate and commit so much more of my time to football and recovery.

"The demands of AFLW are getting more and more, which is fantastic, and it's great for the professionalism of the competition, and it's going to make the quality of the comp so much better too, so I'm all for it. The consequence of that is you need a compromise, and I think I've found a good one for me this year."

Pullar said she was inspired to create her Dreamtime Academy after taking part in previous footy clinics in the Northern Territory, including with former teammate Zoe Savarirayan and her uncle, ex-Bomber Shane Radbone, in Wadeye.

"I was training with a program in Alice called Redtails Pinktails Right Tracks program, which has essentially been operating in Alice Springs for basically two decades now. It's an all-inclusive, open space for any young man or woman, Indigenous or non-Indigenous, to train and earn an opportunity to play at some SANFL partner clubs," she said.

"They're trying to create pathways for young Centralians in football, and as a consequence of that, it's also about building their personal and professional skills as well, and keeping people on the right track through football.

"It was a very eclectic group of people I was training with – young Indigenous men, dads, young women, Indigenous women, kids, young men straight out of juvie, even my former patients from the hospital.

"I had the thought of bringing some of my teammates out here to run a session with the Pinktails girls. And I became quite inspired after seeing some challenging things in the hospital and community, and thought I had the skill set to hopefully facilitate some hope and excitement and dreaming for these young people.

"Just because you're in the middle of Australia, it doesn't mean you should be deprived of these opportunities."

Having started her AFLW career at Brisbane before moving to North Melbourne (and now Sydney), Pullar leant on her extensive network of players and friends to form an "all-star crew".

Premiership quintet Ally Anderson, Courtney Hodder (Brisbane), Emily Bates, Kaitlyn Ashmore (Hawthorn), and Eloise Jones (Adelaide), and Sydney mature-age draftee Sarah Steele-Park (who has three years' teaching experience in Alice Springs) all gave up their time to spend a week in Alice Springs.

Pullar worked alongside Redtails Pinktails Right Tracks organisers Ian McAdam, Rob Clarke and Darren Talbot to help bring the Dreamtime Academy to life, providing organisational support, equipment and helping run the clinics.

The Redtails program has been on the ground in Alice for around 15 years, and is now a registered charity, mentoring marginalised young people in the region and remote territories to help gain employment, as well as providing football pathways to the SANFL and NTFL.

"We had three different clinics that we ran across four days. Our first was a high-performance session at Traegar Park in Alice Springs. That was targeted at the Pinktails Academy players, as well as the Central Australian senior women's players who play in the CAFL," Pullar said.

"Essentially what we were trying to do was model an AFLW session to allow these girls to experience what the next level is like. If you live in a city, you can access us. You can come to an AFLW game. You can play in the VFLW. You can get invited to be a train-on, you can have access to these elite pathways, and there's just none of that here.

"The premise was to allow these girls to see what the next level is, to given them some tools and strategies to continue to hone their skills on and off the field, and reward that behaviour with coming back next year.

"We ran an Alice Springs school holiday clinic over two days, that was for any school-age girls in Alice Springs. It was essentially an Auskick-style rotational footy clinic. We also did a lot of team-building exercises, spoke about leadership, did an employment workshop for the older girls, and went into breakout groups to allow the young girls to connect more personally with players. We had a big signing session with a barbecue and everything.

"The last one was a remote community in Ntaria, or Hermannsburg, which is 170km outside of Alice. That was amazing. We had 80 to 100 kids and young women turn out for it, a bit of an Auskick clinic, some footy games, prizes. We were really big on trying to continue development beyond the camps, and create pathways for these participants to continue to refine their skills in the Pinktails Academy."

Throughout the planning and execution of the Dreamtime Academy and her work at Alice Springs hospital, Pullar has had to maintain her fitness and skills.

She said she's used to training solo during the off-season, given her work commitments mean she can rarely meet up with teammates to complete running and gym sessions.

The running clearly paid off, with Pullar finishing second in Sydney's 1.5km time trial at the start of pre-season.

"Alice was tough, but the change was also really enjoyable and refreshing. I did a lot of running sessions on my own in 40-degree heat, so hopefully that holds me in good stead, fitness-wise," Pullar said.

"I was doing a few laps round Traegar Park, there's a few different ovals in town, and when I had interval work, I would go out to the Larapinta Trail (through the West MacDonnell National Park).

"Everywhere you go it's pretty spectacular, because you've got this beautiful green grass, then you're just surrounded by the red ranges. You'd be running and be hurting, but then you'd look around, and there'd be this euphoria, because the sun is setting on the ranges and you're out there on your own."

As to what's next for the Dreamtime Academy, Pullar is determined for it to not be a one-hit wonder.

"Things can be difficult when you work in this Indigenous space, there's a lot of flash-in-the-pan programs. I'm really big on sustainability and longevity of this, making it sustainable when I'm not a footy player or living in central Australia," she said.

"We'll be back in 2026, and I'm just working through what camps we'll run next year. I want to flesh out our high-performance clinics, because that was really well-received, and nothing of its kind has really ever been facilitated in those remote regions.

"While in Sydney, I'm hoping to build out some partnerships with some local organisations and funds and businesses to provide employment internships and training experiences for participants at football clubs. We've got one in the works with a participant who's shown incredible discipline, commitment, passion and endeavour, and those are the sorts of behaviours we're trying to reward, support and endorse."