TWIN sisters Mizuki and Nalu Brothwell have done the drive in and out of the quaint Mornington Peninsula town of Balnarring thousands of times. 

Locals for 13 years, they've spent countless minutes driving up and down Balnarring Road, past the football club, into the town, to the beach, around the residential 'triangle' - you name it. 

So, when their friend and fellow Balnarring Junior Football Club product Matilda Argus said, "have you seen the signs?", they both couldn't believe they'd driven right past them.  

"I'm so bad, I didn't even notice them until Tilda's like, "have you seen the signs and stuff?", Nalu said.

"Then we went for a drive around and looked at all of them, it was just so lovely." 

When Argus and the Brothwell twins were drafted in December last year, their former junior club made sure the whole community - and anyone who drove through for the holidays – knew it. 

Multiple signs and placards were plastered around the town over summer, from the corner of the intersection to the local café, including one at each of the three entries into the town, congratulating the area's newly minted AFLW players. 

"They were up for quite a while and I hadn't seen them, so I had no idea they were up. But it was pretty funny when we did go past them, like, oh my God, our names are on the board," Mizuki said. 

It's a pretty exciting accolade for the club to shout about. Impressing as a formidable centre-half back in her draft year, Mizuki was taken at pick no.14 by the Western Bulldogs, while forward Nalu was taken at pick no.50. With Argus also taken at pick no.41 by Collingwood, the club doubled its total AFL and AFLW cohort in one single draft. 

Although many of the football club members were glued to the broadcast coverage on draft night, the very public signage certainly spread the word amongst the rest of the community, catapulting the once local girls "from down the road" into mini celebrities overnight. 

"It was so funny, the week after we got drafted I was walking to the gym, which goes through the shops and stuff, and every second person was like, 'oh my God congratulations!', even people I didn't know, it was just so lovely," Nalu said. 

For both of the Brothwells, playing football was something they'd been begging their parents to do for years. Despite the family being huge AFL fans, they held off registering the girls for their local club due to the risk of injuries. 

But with nearly 500 people involved in the football club, in a town with a population of just 2371, there was no way for the girls to escape the pull of football, finally making the switch from the occasional game in school to the newest recruits of the junior league. 

"In primary school I'd play footy and I knew how to kick and stuff because my parents and grandparents all love footy. But especially my best friend, Gleeson, she lives across the road from us, and her and her brother were always kicking the footy, so we'd join in," Nalu said.

"I played netball for Balnarring…but would always go watch Gleeson's footy games, and [club President] Cam (Price) would be like, ‘oh, can we put you on the field?' And I'll be like, ‘oh, I wish'. 

"I don't know what happened. I've played lots of school footy every year, year nine and year 10…and then we just switched."

Balnarring FC president Cam Price had seen the girls playing netball at the courts next door to the football oval, and by his own admission, had been badgering them for years to try their hand at footy. 

"They live just up the road [from the football club]. They played a lot of netball here to about 16 [years old], and then I had been begging them," Price said. 

"They used to walk around the triangle and then I would just stop and continually say 'you gotta play football, you gotta play football!' because they were just so good at netball.

"The transition [to footy] was all about that stop and grab. It makes them just such good markers in AFL, just to really fly at the ball. It's like in netball, if you're an attacker, you're coming at the ball and you really have to jump sometimes, to go to that ball. So, the mechanics is the same with football. But their height definitely helped, so did their athleticism and having a twin."

Equipped with a built-in training partner, the identical twins were in the unique position of having an exact physical equal to perform drills alongside. Paired with their determination to get better and their ongoing encouragement of each other, the girls rapidly became natural footballers.

"Tuesday afternoon, 4 o'clock after school, they were the first two here for an hour," Price said. 

"Because they were a twin, they could constantly do drills together. Whereas all the other kids were looking for some other kid to kick with or, you know, no one has that same dedication, whereas the twins were together the whole time."

Bookending each side of the ground with Mizuki down back and Nalu up forward, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was strategically decided to help the girls train.

 But according to the Brothwells that wasn't the case. 

"No, it wasn't [on purpose] I'm pretty sure it was our Balnarring coach, he just said, okay, so 'you're gonna go there and you're gonna go there'. And we just stuck to it," Nalu said. 

The twins may say it wasn't a calculated decision, but Price disagrees. With the foresight to split the girls to give both of them optimal game time, the decision ultimately gave both Brothwellss the best opportunity moving into the inter-league competition. 

"'Miz' is a natural centre-half back, and Nalu is a natural centre-half back as well," Price said.

"Nalu, she's pretty much exactly the same as Mizuki she's just a little bit smaller. She's a centre-half back as well, but also, Mizuki was the (Marsh AFL National Championships) All-Australian half back. So, there's not much you can do, you're not taking Mizuki out or anything, so Nalu sort of had switch to a forward, which she's learnt beautifully, but she'll play at the back at Essendon, I'm sure. 

"Josh Moore, who's ex Dandenong Stingrays (now Essendon's AFLW List and Recruiting Manager), will know that traditionally we moved Nalu forward because Miz was there. There's no point around having both of them in the same spot. So that's why. I don't know where they'll play (Nalu), but she's a back as well as a forward."

After adopting their positions and throwing themselves into training, everything happened in rapid succession from there. Their third game of football was inter-league, and within 12 months, Price had transitioned them to the Dandenong Stingrays. 

"Josh (Moore) just rang us and said, 'what the hell have you given us here? These girls are unbelievable, just keep giving them to us'," Price said. 

"It was literally probably 18 months, maybe only 22 months of football before they got drafted. We see girls now, under 12s, some of those girls have played 70, 80 games of football before their first year of 12s. Whereas Mizuki and Nalu probably still haven't played 70 or 80 hours of football yet.

"It's pretty full on. But it's also an advantage in that we can just say wow, they've only played 50 games of football, so where can we get them to?" 

Whilst Price and the girls family had faith in their ability, Mizuki was still shocked at her rise up the ranks of the AFLW pathways. 

"I couldn't believe it," Mizuki said. 

"I think our parents knew [we were joining the Stingrays] a little while before we found out, but I was just like ‘What? Are you serious?' I didn't really know what the Stingrays were… And then when we went to a few inter-league trainings and a few of the girls were training with the Stingrays, and then when we got asked, I was like, that is crazy." 

With Price's coaching connections to the Stingrays and three AFLW draftees last year alone, the club is building reputation as a new footy factory. 

Combined with Balnarring only fielding a women's seniors team tied to Hastings Football Club, the future of women's football is making its home right down on the peninsula.

"We're just really proud, all of the community," Balnarring Football Club secretary Pir Price said.

"The girls being such a big part of the community. They're down at the gym. They worked locally they're always walking around the triangle, like Cam was talking about. For us to be such a small town to have the three girls… because to be fair, we're a footy town, but there's also a lot of people that wouldn't know. (With the signs), we just wanted to get their names up in lights." 

Whilst the local girls have since made the move closer to their respective clubs in the north-west, the Brothwell twins have a lot of love for the little Peninsula town that propelled them onto footy's biggest stage.  

"Everyone is so supportive and I'm so grateful to have grown up in Balnarring and especially for Cam and everyone down there for the help they've given us to get drafted," Mizuki said.

"[The community] made me enjoy it so much more, it just pushed me to want to get drafted and go further in footy."