THERE are plenty of footballers with a basketball background, but you'd be hard-pressed to find many that have a basketball and a surgical residency background.

Enter Sydney's mature age ruck recruit, Caitlin Reid.

Aged 28 and in her first year of AFLW, Reid took the long road to the game, following the classic basketball-to-footy pipeline in her mid-twenties.

But with a medical degree and a masters in surgery under her belt, she now lives the best of both worlds as an AFLW footballer and a senior resident medical officer (SRMO) at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney.

"I do some little operations, I help some of the more senior surgical doctors do bigger operations and yes, see a lot of consults in the hospital," Reid said.

"In layman's terms, if you go to the hospital and you go to emergency because you've got tummy pain and you're found to have appendicitis, I'm the doctor that the emergency department will call to come see you."

Recruited as a ruck option for the Swans, the 185cm Reid has been thrown straight into the AFLW system, learning the ropes under the expert tutelage of fellow ruck Ally Morphett.

But with staff shortages in the NSW healthcare system, Reid hasn't been able to quit her job as an SRMO and has now found herself taking annual leave at the hospital to navigate both.

"Unfortunately, our healthcare system in NSW is struggling at the moment," she said.

"We're pretty understaffed, particularly with surgery. There's not a lot of people that want to do my job, so I felt like I couldn't really quit full-time to be honest… it would be very challenging to do that.

"I'm still technically employed full-time, but I basically use a lot of my leave (for AFLW).

"I've cut down to probably about 20 hours per week… that will hopefully reduce the amount of time I have to be at the hospital during the season and then once the season finishes, I'll be back working full-time.

"I try and work as much as I can, but obviously I don't want my work to affect my football, because football's my main priority."

While prioritising her football now and fitting surgery around it, Reid's transition between her professional careers had some teething issues in pre-season.  

"[On recovery days in pre-season] I'd come into the club, usually about 9am or 10am, do whatever we had to do here and then go to the hospital afterwards," Reid said.

"Or there were other days where we would only have one gym session and I'd have work for the whole day, so I'd come into the club at about 5.30 in the morning, do a gym session, leave here at about 6.30am, and then be at work from 7am till 10pm.

"I don't do that anymore in-season for obvious reasons."

Trying to manage both roles full-time had put a strain on her body she didn't need, resulting in a diagnosis of plantar fasciitis in pre-season. It's an injury that's difficult to fix when the prescribed treatment is to "get off your feet," and as a surgeon/footballer your daily step count is through the roof.

The challenges of juggling one she's been able to share with teammate and fellow doctor, Lulu Pullar.

"It's a unique situation that we're both in and it's really lovely to be with someone who gets the pressures of both, because both are pretty competitive and emotionally charged career paths," Reid said.

"I think, just from my own experience and talking to Lulu, it's probably a little bit ambitious (to do both full time), and I think you'd be putting yourself in harm's way from an injury perspective.

"But I think if you want to shoot for the stars and careers outside of footy, you definitely can."

Shooting for the stars is what got Reid into AFLW in the first place. She'd spent most of her early 20s playing semi-professional basketball in the NBL1 in Albury, but when COVID-19 hit in 2020 and the competition was cancelled, Reid was itching to find something else to play.

"The only sport going on in Albury at the time was this AFL Nines local comp, so I just started playing in that for fun with friends," Reid said.

"Some girls who were playing in it were from a local footy team and said, 'oh, you're pretty tall, and you can catch a ball. Do you want to come down to our local training?'

"I started playing with them and by the time basketball was starting back up again in March, I'd been training with them for about three months, and I just preferred footy."

From the Wodonga Raiders to eventually playing for both Geelong's VFLW side and the East Coast Eagles in the Sydney AFL, Reid found herself quickly climbing up the ranks to AFLW.

"I thought playing AFLW was a bit of a pipedream, to be honest. But I'm pretty competitive – with basketball, I've always played competitively and same with every sport I've ever played, I love competitive sport," Reid said.

"The fact that everyone's trying to be the best version of themselves, it makes it more fun for me. So, once I started playing footy, I knew I wanted to play in the most competitive fashion I could."

While many dream of becoming a surgeon or an AFLW player, Reid has made both look possible. But she refuses to take either for granted, attributing her career (both of them!) to sheer hard work and determination.

"The quality of just wanting to be the best version of yourself that you can be, I think that carries over into your academic career, your footy career, and any other career you have and even your relationships with family and friends," she said.

"I think, the perception that you need to be really smart to be a doctor is probably not entirely true, I think you just need to work really hard. I would definitely say that I'm not the smartest person, I'm just really determined.

"I think I've always wanted to be the best version of myself or the best at anything that I can be, and that's probably why I've been lucky enough to get this far in footy that I have.

"Even when I got drafted, it was still a complete shock. It's a bit of a dream come true."