FOOTBALL, family and community are often intricately connected, and are features of life with which many can connect.

They are also the three elements that feature in artist Bayley Mifsud/Merindah-Gunya's ball design for the next two years of the Sir Doug Nicholls Round.

Mifsud, a proud Peek and Kirrae Whurrong woman from the Gunditjmara mob near Warrnambool, has titled her work Weerreeyarr, or "woman's spirit", in dedication to her Nan.

She has also spray-painted a mural on a wall on level one of Marvel Stadium (near aisles four and five), a scaled-up version of her ball design.

"For the artwork itself, it was (originally) done as a painting, so it didn't actually take too long to conceptualise, and the mural is just a larger scale of that. The story, all the symbols – it's almost a replica of what's on the ball," Mifsud told AFL.com.au.

"I think it's really important that we tell that story to the larger scale. Obviously the ball is quite small and getting kicked around by players, so you can't see (the design) at all times, so it was really important that we put the whole design on this wall so people can enjoy it for the next couple of years.

"Today I'm working with spray paint, mostly. I used to hand-paint murals, but after a few brick murals, I discovered spray paint. It's a lot quicker and the pigment is a lot better, so I do find on a large scale, it just works a lot better. Something this size would take a full day. But if it was my first mural, it would have been a three-day job.

"I'm also grateful for having my little sister (Zarlie) here to ask her to grab paint and wash things. She does a lot of the admin-type stuff for me, I reckon it'd be about double the time if I had to get up and down off the forklift every time."

Mifsud is the daughter of former AFL official Jason, while sister Jordy won two VFLW best and fairests with Box Hill and has coached the Woomeras program for teenage Indigenous girls.

She has been a full-time artist for three years, after a seed of an idea that developed during the lockdown periods over COVID-19 took root.

"The story for this ball is around family. My whole childhood was spent around a football field, which may seem a little bit dramatic, but my whole family moved to Narrm or Melbourne when I was in primary school, because my Dad started coaching football and then worked at the AFL," Mifsud said.

"It was our whole lives, it was the players we'd have around for dinners, it was the community in which we were around. My grandparents would always be looking after us at the footy field, we always felt safe, it was just a real sense of community and around football and sport in general, being a place in which people and kids are able to have a sense of belonging.

"There are three meeting places, which look like circles, because traditionally there weren't any buildings in the country, they were either campsites or waterholes. They're all done from a bird's eye view, because of Bunjil, our creator – Aboriginal people believe the reason we are here is an eagle called Bunjil. The three meeting places symbolise the three locations where I spent most of my childhood watching football.

"I've also put people symbols. They look like (the letter) u, it's people sitting with their legs crossed, showing the players supporters and kids growing up on the sidelines – I've got Nan, Dad, myself and Pop on here as well. 

"The other symbol is journey lines, which is on the bottom of this mural, and they symbolise the future, the past and the present."