CHLOE Molloy has no regrets. Not even over three letters.

The Sydney star caused confusion and consternation in September last year when, less than an hour before the Swans were set to run out for their round two match against St Kilda in Melbourne, reports emerged that Molloy had ruptured her ACL. 

The club - and Molloy herself - denied these reports vehemently.

After the game, Molloy and the Swans admitted she had suffered the injury.

Speaking to AFL.com.au on the eve of the 2025 AFLW season, Molloy said she wouldn't change how she handled disclosing the injury.

"I'm quite content and comfortable that my main goal was not to have my teammates know before they run out to try win a game of football knowing that their captain is out for the season," she said.

"Their friend is about to go through something that's so demanding physically and mentally, and I have three teammates [who have done ACLs previously].

"So I'm really, really content with how it all unfolded."

Molloy, the Swans' co-captain and one of the competition's most prominent players, had suffered the injury during a training session two days before the game but didn't know it.

She'd trained fully in the 5km session and woke the next morning to a painful and inflamed knee. With a flight to Melbourne looming, the decision was made to get a scan in Melbourne as a precaution.

"We land in Melbourne and everyone else goes off to match prep and get ready for the game, I go to get a scan with my physio," Molloy said.

"Back at the hotel, the girls are starting to trickle back in and then the doctor came to me and says ‘you've actually done your ACL'.

"So in one breath I'm thinking I'm playing tomorrow, and then I'm being told my season is done.

"You never think it's going to be you."

Devastated, Molloy made the immediate decision to keep a lid on the news so as not to interrupt the side's preparation for the next day's game.

"My mindset was ‘team-first always'," she said.

"We'd had three teammates on that team do ACLs and that's so traumatizing between the ears.

"So my thing was that it's so unhelpful for me to share this news right now to the team while they're trying to win. That's the main outcome of our team. We want to win games of football and I also didn't want to traumatize teammates with them thinking about their knee. 

"I put myself in their position and was like I would be forever grateful if someone was able to handle themselves the way I did. 

"It was a joint decision, but my first thought was that this can't be news, this is not what they need to prepare for the game. 

"They'd come back from match prep, they're amped, they're psyched, and I'm not about to put a downer on the season just yet."

While the rest of the footy world was confused, frustrated and searching for answers, Molloy's plan had worked. 

Her teammates ran out onto RSEA Park not knowing their teammate had been ruled out for the rest of the season.

"They had no idea. I had to put a mask on because I knew the information the night prior, but the girls didn't know," Molloy said.

"We were warming up for the game and I remember trying to be so excited for them, but then my head would just run and be like ‘I'm not going to get to do what they're doing'. I was trying to smile and act normal and engage with fans, trying to act normal.

"I saw my partner that night and I just burst into tears. It kind of saved the reality of it for a day or two, and then it really hit me hard. It delayed it for sure. I'd gotten through training! I was like ‘there's no way I've done it, I'm fine'. It was the denial of what the injury was. The waterworks came a few days later. 

"There's no one greater than the team, not even the captain, not even with this sort of news, and we want those four points at the end of the day and that's what we were striving for."

Less than a year on from that rainy, confusing Sunday in September, Molloy will make her return to AFLW football on Friday night.

Her beloved team, the one she endeavored to protect by withholding the truth from the public, will host Richmond at North Sydney Oval.

Molloy knows people within the industry may hold a grudge against her for how she handled the news of her injury. But she maintains she wouldn't change a thing. She did what she did to protect her team, and they love and want to protect her right back.

"There's no malice, it's not a personal thing. It is news at the end of the day, and people want to know and I appreciate that people are so invested in what I'm doing individual and as a team," Molloy said.

"When Kate McCarthy reported it, there was a little bit of panic stations. But there was a massive relief in me as a captain and as a teammate and as a friend to the girls running out onto the field that they didn't know.

"When the girls came in after the game, it was raining and gloomy, and then Scott [Gowans] debriefed and that's when I told them. The response was that there was a room full of devastated people for me, and in that moment, I actually felt really loved that I had so many people care about me. [It was a] little silver lining."