FIRST came the scrap of paper on the noticeboard at school. Then came the coin toss that landed the right way up.

And with that Daisy Pearce was on her way to becoming the face of AFLW and into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.

Growing up in Bright in north-east Victoria, like a lot of young girls, Pearce played footy with the boys until the rules pretty much dictated that she had to stop.

She then moved to Eltham High School in north-east Melbourne, where not knowing anyone, she started playing volleyball and before long, she was good enough to represent the state at underage level.

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But then came the call out via the noticeboard for those interested in joining the school's first women's footy team for a round-robin against nearby schools.

She joined. She played. And with the muscle memory from all those years of playing bush footy with the boys kicking in, she dominated. She barely made it back to the school bus before one of the umpires made a beeline towards her, imploring her to find a team and keep playing.

After a bit of Googling at the school library, she discovered the heretofore unknown world of the Victorian Women's Football League and within weeks, she was playing senior football for the Darebin Falcons, the powerhouse club of women's footy, travelling several hours a week on the 513 bus to do so.

At Darebin she came under the thrall of the great women's footy figure Peta Searle, her initial coach.

"It was still very grassroots, and there wasn't a lot of professionalism or striving for it to be an elite competition at that point," Pearce recalled.

Women were way down the pecking order when it came to local footy back then. Access to grounds, dressing rooms and other infrastructure was tough.

"You'd get mocked or made fun of, or you'd go to a physio because you've had a sore knee and had a Grand Final in three weeks you wanted to get up for, and they sort of didn't see any urgency in it, because they would say, 'What? You play football?' It was that kind of stuff."

Not that any of this mattered to Pearce, an instant star. She won the Lisa Hardeman Medal for the competition best and fairest in 2005, her first season. She would win it again in 2014.

In that debut season, she also won the first of five Darebin best and fairests and played in the first of 10 Falcons premierships.

But as she moved into her mid-20s, she needed another challenge, which brings us to the coin toss.

By 2013, the AFL had identified that women's footy was the game's next growth area. And so it was that Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs would lead the charge with a pair of exhibition games.

To pick the teams, a draft featuring the best 50 players in the country was held with the Demons and Bulldogs taking turns. Pearce shaped as the obvious first choice and when Melbourne won the coin toss to pick first, she became a Demon, and the next stage of her football journey started.

Doubtless, had the coin landed the other way and she became a Bulldog, her career from that point might have played out in similar circumstances.

Indeed, she could have been an AFLW premiership player sooner given that the Dogs won their flag in 2018 whereas Melbourne did not salute until her final season in 2022.

But Melbourne suited her perfectly and she became as impactful a person for that club over that period as Max Gawn, dominating both the exhibition games for the first few seasons and then once AFLW started in 2017.

Her game smarts were off the charts, especially through the formative years of AFLW where she had been playing the game better and for longer, remembering that many of the earlier AFLW players hadn't come through the traditional pathways, but instead were fast-tracked into footy because of their prowess at other sports.

"That put me in such a strong position for a long time, because I'd studied the game and played and obsessed over the game for probably longer than those I was surrounded by, with many taking up the sport later in life," Pearce said.

There was also her deep and abiding love and passion for the game and an understanding and gratitude that in a different time and place, she might not be playing at all.

And there was the chip on her shoulder that so many of the early true believers also carried.

"I was told so many times that I couldn't play; either that I wasn't allowed to because of the rules, or that I couldn’t, because I wasn't capable," she said.

Be it the small world of women's football she entered, or the much larger AFLW world she later helped lead, Pearce never bought into the hype or paid any heed to her stardom. She started every season with a clean slate.

"Almost to a fault," she now admits. "I had a humility where I thought every pre-season that the game had gone past me, and I wasn't going to get picked, so I had to get better at something.

"This will sound really silly, but until I retired, I think I'd had it in my head for such a long time that the game's going to go past me if I don't get better."

It was only after she retired that she took a broader, more objective view of her career.

"Melbourne put out a highlights package of me playing. I remember watching it and thinking, 'Oh, I was actually good'," she said.

"I was never athletically gifted, but I think I had good hands and good skills and a level of composure that allowed me to find time and space to use them.

"I was able to kind of kick both sides, and (was) comfortable on both sides of my body and I felt like my ball handling was something that was really strong."

There is an endless list of career highlights for Pearce. Up there is being front and centre of the dizzying evolution of women's footy although she shies away from the term 'pioneer', reserving that descriptor for those who did the hard yards well before she found her way to Darebin.

But she recalled her excitement filling in her name for that inaugural draft because the AFL letterhead on the document made it all the more substantial and real.

And then there was stepping out on to the MCG for the first time.

"I'd never driven into the MCG; I was a Carlton supporter and we'd just catch the train from hours away and went in through the big lines in general admission and sat up in the third level because we couldn't afford any memberships so to drive into the MCG to play a game was just like … Ive made it."

Pearce's Hall of Fame induction isn't just a personal celebration. It's also a great occasion for Melbourne, and for its initial buy-in to women's football.

"I was always so proud to represent the club that did that," she said.

"They just always believed in me not just as a player but gave me opportunities to work at the club and better understand the administration of football and helped me grow and grow a network with the media side of things."

And when Pearce was expecting her twins, Sylvie and Roy, the club respected her position and made it work from a contractual perspective.

"There's a lot of things that we both hadn't done before," she said.

"But the support that I got through that time was amazing; I probably wouldn't have been able to get back and do what I did without the belief that Melbourne had in me.

"They gave me the flexibility to put my family first and adapt around it in terms of my training and commitments and I'm really grateful for that."

Daisy Pearce

Melbourne (2017-22): 55 games, 25 goals
AFLW premiership: 2022
Melbourne best and fairest: 2017, 2018, 2022
All-Australian: 2017 (captain), 2018, 2022
Melbourne captain: 2017-18, 2020-22
VWFL premierships: Darebin 2006, 2007, 2008 (c), 2009 (c), 2010 (c), 2013 (c), 2014 (c), 2015 (c)
VFLW premierships: Darebin 2016 (c), 2017
Helen Lambert Medal (VWFL B&F): 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015
Lisa Hardeman Medal (Grand Final BOG): 2005, 2014
Darebin best and fairest: 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012