BRIT Bonnici knows something has to change at Collingwood.

Coming into her 11th season, she has seen the highs of a preliminary final and the more recent lows, and is desperate to get the Pies' AFLW team back up the ladder.

Keenly aware of the far more successful men's side just over the corridor at the KGM Centre, she pitched an idea to women's football boss Jess Burger and coach Sam Wright in her exit meeting in December – an extended stint in the men's program.

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Along with men's footy boss Charlie Gardiner, a plan for Bonnici to be embedded in Craig McRae's program was hatched. Not just a one-off session, or sitting up the back in the occasional meeting. The entire month of February.

"From the outside, Collingwood (men) is seen as a team that has this unbelievable on-field connection, and a plug-and-play mentality," Bonnici told AFL.com.au.

"We're under no illusion that we haven't been as competitive as we want to be in the last few years. My exit (meeting) was very much around getting the program thriving again. I've been in the league for 10 years, but I haven't been a professional athlete for 10 years.

"I have a bit of an interest in coaching, and wanted to scratch the surface a little bit and see if it's something I actually want to do, or something you naturally end up doing as an experienced player."

Bonnici's "program" was split into four separate weeks: shadowing backline coach and former AFLW assistant Jordan Roughead; then development coach and former Victoria youth girls teammate Chloe McMillan; onto midfield coach Matthew Boyd, given Bonnici's role in the engine room; and finally taking a step back to observe all aspects from a macro level. 

"I've worked with 'Roughy' in the past, and understand a bit about the way he sees the game and coaches. It was a cool experience to jump into a different line, and the amount of experience in the men's backline is unbelievable. It was everything from pre-training meetings, match committee, team culture meetings and all the rest," Bonnici said.

"Seeing Chloe transition into the men's coaching space and what she's been able to achieve is really cool. In the men's program, there's four development coaches, so it's interesting to see the variety of resources.

"I really gravitated towards 'Boydy' – being a midfielder, you want to be amongst it and get as many ideas as you can. And boy, he had no problem throwing me into a couple of drills and getting me moving, and challenging me with anything he was challenging the boys with. We're both hard task-masters, straight to the point.

"The last week was really the meeting side of things, watching training through a different lens – from above rather than on the track – and seeing how the boys applied what they'd learned over the month. Then I was in the coach's box – or balcony, really – for the practice game out at Bundoora. The access was unbelievable."

Collingwood's women's program is very much in the midst of a rebuild, having applied for extra assistance in the form of two bonus list spots last year after four wins in the past two seasons.

"Everybody's seen 'Fly' (McRae) come in and how the program's become really connected and that Collingwood has changed significantly," Bonnici said.

"I've been able to see that has been built, supported and fostered, rather than a natural thing that's happened. I couldn't believe how often I heard the term 'express yourself' within the first week alone. Seeing the way they embrace having fun is something I really hope our program can lean on.

"The way they educate their players was a really key thing I took away. We have 13 new girls this year, and there's going to be times where education is going to be one of the biggest keys to our program. We have to build that connection really quickly. The new players are given space to be new players, while their senior players are continually challenged to excel."

Bonnici has developed a close relationship with Roughead, who started his coaching journey with the Debbie Lee-run VWFL side St Albans Spurs while playing with the Western Bulldogs in 2015.

He then progressed to the Dogs' AFLW side in 2017 (including the premiership the following season), missing a year of W coaching in 2019 when he first was traded to Collingwood, before juggling W coaching with playing duties. The father-of-two became a full-time men's assistant coach in 2024.

"I was never going to be a coach. When I was a player, I did a lot of study (Bachelor of Business, Masters of Sports Management and an MBA) and my initial intention was to get out of the football industry, whether it was to a 9-5 desk job or not," Roughead said.

"As I got more experienced and older as a player, my individual performance became less important, and it was more about contributing to the team and supporting younger guys with less experience in feeling comfortable and feeling like they belonged and in turn helping improve the team's performance.

"I've loved them for different reasons. Working in W and being exposed to coaching in W really helped me as far as presenting and feeling comfortable, strategically and tactically.

"As a footballer, I was a good trier. I wasn't a highly talented player, and the thought of [jumping straight to] coaching Steele Sidebottom, Scott Pendlebury and Nick Daicos, superstar players who can do things that I was never capable of – I needed to build a bit of a foundation for my own coaching, how I present it, even how I see the game and how you communicate it to players. 

"One thing that I have found really different is that a lot of the time coaching in the AFLW space, the players really wanted to understand why it's important and the information and detail around it, whereas a lot of the time the men's program is 'let's do it, which blade of grass do you want me to stand on?'."

Roughead has seen Bonnici grow and thrive over their shared time at the club, with the plucky midfielder just 22 years old when he joined the W side.

"There's curiosity and passion there. You can tell Britta to run through a brick wall on game day, and she'll do it, but she also likes to understand the why, even the social dynamics of groups and how to best pull performances out of people," Roughead said.

"Her leadership has grown immensely, she's confident in herself, she's got strong morals and she's a good human. She's a multiple best and fairest (2023 and 2025), you can ask her to tag a player out of a game, or be at the bottom of a pack and get 30 touches. 

"She sets a really high standard from a high-performance point of view, and has since day dot, I think she's probably one of the players who has elevated the standards of training sessions and games through her desire to be the absolute best she can be."

Bonnici paid tribute to Roughead's continued support of the team, which has bookended his official stint as assistant coach.

"It's not a flash in the pan – the athlete is something he's very passionate about. That's not a female athlete or a male athlete, he sees us all the same," she said.

"He knows how I like to be coached in general, so he continued to ask me questions and draw things out of me the same way he did while coaching. He made sure I wasn't a passenger in the experience."

Roughead is keen to open the door to further crossover between the programs, with lessons to be learned at both ends, but the spread-out nature of the two seasons is a hindrance for those unable to devote big chunks of off-season time like Bonnici.

"I don't know the right way to do this, and I'm sure the people who are making decisions are doing so for the right reasons, but the seasons are skewed so far apart, it makes it really difficult for alignment and exposure," Roughead said.

"If they were better aligned, you could get really quality people in men's programs the time and capacity to be involved in women's as well, to help bring things along.

"Let's make it as easy as we can to have people available to both programs, not at the expense of anyone. You need to be able to sit in the background for at least two weeks, not one day, and then chat about what you've observed and how things might be done differently.

"An afternoon like today (Wednesday ahead of a Sunday match), the men's program is here but not doing much aside from getting massages. It would be the perfect time to align the programs and do something together, whether it's development or education programs to get more cross-pollination."

Should Bonnici – currently a casual project officer in the prison system – continue down the coaching path post-footy career, she'll come across an interesting quirk on the home front: long-term partner and AFLW assistant coach Ryan Pendlebury (brother of Scott), who's recently signed with Geelong after two flags at North Melbourne.

"We're both very competitive people, but we can ask each other generally about work or training, and it's not really about my team or his team, we want to support each other to succeed," she said.

"When you play each other, you get into each other in the morning and someone comes out with bragging rights, but it's about having his back and wanting him to succeed in what he's doing. 

"Right now, that's in the W league, but who knows what that'll look like in the future? We might end up coaching against each other in the AFL. But it's just like playing against your mates, or some of the girls who play against their partners."