IT'S NOT often that an ACL injury is actually a positive thing for a player.

And at the time, Harriet Cordner certainly didn't see it that way. But looking back at the injury, which spelled the end of her time at Richmond, it was the starting point of the best form of her career.

Now she is an All-Australian and widely deemed the best key defender in the AFLW this year. But it has taken a long time to get there.

Originally selected by Melbourne as a rookie in its inaugural list build, Cordner had always loved footy – she came from fine footy pedigree, after all – but was an athlete, not a footballer.

Instead, having grown up playing soccer, there was a sense of impostor syndrome when arriving at Melbourne and meeting much-respected teammates like Daisy Pearce, Paxy Paxman and Mel Hickey. They were all strong footy names within the women's space, and Cordner felt like she was coming from a long way back.

"I had been a good athlete all my life, but I was like 'I don't even know how to play this sport', you know? And I'd loved footy too, but I hadn't played it, and there was definitely an element of like, 'Oh god, I'm not as good as that'. But I so badly wanted to make it work," Cordner told AFL.com.au.

"I just so badly wanted to be good, and it was almost like everything I did, I was so tense. Tense when I did it because it was like 'it's got to work out' and I felt like it had to work out now or it was going to be gone."

It didn't help that Cordner's grandfather Don won the 1946 Brownlow medal playing for Melbourne, or that her great-grandfather Edward and his brother Harry both played for the Demons before him.

With that sort of lineage, there's even more expectation.

Named in the midfield for Melbourne's very first AFLW game, it was somewhat of a shock for her dad.

"He said, 'What do you mean in the middle?'," Cordner said.

"He was kind of like, 'What the hell are they doing?' And it didn't last very long. I think there was a bit of a 'Oh, she'll be right, she'll be great at it' and I wasn't. I was learning, but there probably wasn't time for that, there wasn't time for them to develop me and put time into it."

It led to Cordner playing with a lot of doubt, tentative about her skill and capacity to impact for her team.

Delisted after that first season, she was re-signed by Melbourne as a free agent for 2018. Cordner ultimately spent four years with the club before being traded to Richmond ahead of its second season in the AFLW.

She was the same serious person that started her footy career with the Demons, wanting to control everything within her grasp and ensure she was doing everything right to get the best out of herself.

"I was this kind of athlete that thought you've got to be serious all the time, and if I'm not always thinking about getting better and showing that on my face, then I'm letting myself down. Like, I'm not making the most of every opportunity I have in this space," Cordner explained.

It meant watching vision over, and over again. From different angles, with different perspectives, alongside different people. It was vision of both games and training. Always locked in on where to improve and what mistakes were made.

Now, partner Bree and backline coach Lloyd Perris have convinced her to find a bit more balance in her process. Sometimes there isn't more to learn, and sometimes, it achieves nothing but living in the errors.

"I still make mistakes. Obviously, football is a game of mistakes, it's just a constant game of mistakes. The bloody ball's the wrong shape for it not to be, right? So, I am enjoying those parts of it just as much as I am enjoying the parts where I'm doing good things," Cordner said.

"(Perris) has been a good coach for me in a balance-sense. He's really good at being like, 'Well, that's the way that happened' and because sometimes I'm like, 'Why?' and he's like, 'I don't have that for you'."

Learning to relinquish a little bit of that control started back in round three of season six, 2022. As Cordner was on the far side of Punt Road Oval battling it out against Fremantle, she ruptured her ACL and needed to be helped from the ground.

"I controlled everything all the time, right? And I still did my knee," Cordner said frankly.

"That for me was like, well, shit happens. I was like that up until then, and I learned a lesson that it actually is just not all in my control."

That proved to be Cordner's final game with the Tigers. After sitting out the fast-tracked 2022 S7 campaign, she was traded to Carlton as part of the club's sweeping change amid a historic internal review. She was one of several new faces at Princes Park in 2023, signalling a new era.

"I returned from my knee at Carlton and still like to control what I can control, and I still have certain things that I put my head down and do quite religiously, but in a much different way," Cordner said. 

"I was able to be like, actually there are so many people within a program that can help me be better, and by opening myself up to those people and saying, you know, I find it really difficult to switch off after a game, or I find I get in my head when I make a mistake, or whatever parts of the mental side of the game that I struggled with.

"Actually telling people about that and learning that about me was a really helpful tool, because you don't feel nearly as alone when that happens."

The external perception of Cordner was always that she was the most diligent athlete. Preparation, recovery, everything was executed with great discipline. But there was also the view that she was hard, serious, lacking that lightness that stabilises that hardcore athlete.

That was brought to a head when she played her 75th game in round two this year, and teammates shared videos. Tara Bohanna – once a rival key forward – shared that her initial view of Cordner was "intense and not fun" but was relieved to understand that underneath the hard exterior was a joyful, quirky person.

"That is definitely what people perceive me as from the outside, a little but shut off and obviously I'm pretty focused, and I probably did used to be quite like that," she said.

The exuberance of her young Carlton teammates has helped to expose the fun side of Cordner. When pre-game dances became part of the warm-up, the option was to get involved, or separate herself from the group.

"I was probably challenged last year, the way that we approached things, like with our pre-game dancing with Poppy (Scholz) and Soph (McKay) coming in and changing the dynamics of the group a little bit. It was a bit like lean in or stand at the back and look like an idiot," Cordner said.

"And I was never going to do that. I was never going to not lean in. But it was a little bit of a challenge initially. I was a bit like, 'I don't know if we can dance and then lose' … and it just got to the point where I was like, 'Well, this is it.'

"I do think it's helped heaps, I think it's helped me understand that there's the process, and you can be really dialled into your process and (be) a really high-performing athlete and drive really high standards, which I know I do all of those things. But you can also be a lot of fun and drive the silliness as well."

While footy is "the centrepiece" of her life, she is also using it to help drive the club's Carlton Respects program. It initially started in the classrooms where she taught, delivering the Road to Respect program, and now she is an advocate more broadly.

Across the 11 seasons of AFLW, Cordner has evolved and grown both as a footballer and as a person, now hitting her groove on-and-off the field. And now she knows that she belongs.

"I just so badly wanted to be good, and there was a bit of that impostor syndrome stuff going on. All these stories came into my brain of like, well, maybe I'm not good enough," Cordner said.

"Now I feel like I belong. I feel like I deserve to be here. I'm a footballer. That's the journey I've been on over 11 years; a lot has happened in between. But when I step out onto the field, I'm not just an athlete handing out there.

"No, I'm a bloody good footballer, and I can own that."