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Ali Brigginshaw's decorated rugby league career ended with a heavy defeat but there can be no doubt about the impact the Broncos playmaker has had on the game.
Brigginshaw's final NRL W game ended in a heavy defeat. As the merciless Roosters ran away with the NRL W grand final it was hard to think of a less fitting end for a career as legendary as Ali Brigginshaw's.
The 36-year old and the rest of the Broncos were helpless to stop a Tricolour massacre that ended 30-6 as the Roosters earned a manner of vengeance for last year's grand final defeat to complete a perfect season. They completed just three sets in the entire first half as they drowned under a sea of Roosters points.
From the 15th minute to the 34th minute they only touched the ball to kick it off, drop it or be driven back into the in-goal. For almost 20 minutes they did not play the ball once, with the Roosters running in six straight tries and between the 15th and 39th minutes they did not complete a set.
All of the weapons that have made Brigginshaw great — her skill, her guile, her cunning and class as a playmaker, which she has carried through her 17 years at the top of women's rugby league — were blunted before she even got a chance to use them. She did manage to sneak through for a line-break in the second half, a 35 minutes of football that felt like it only happened because it had to happen so we could get to the end, as she held up a pass before hitting a gap with exquisite timing, but had no support.
In the end, her last day was destroyed by a monster of a team who are without question the best NRLW side ever assembled. They are the culmination of a transformation in women's rugby league that Brigginshaw herself helped bring about through a career that stretches all the way back to the primordial days of women's rugby league. ) When she started playing for Queensland and Australia in 2009 her Broncos teammate Reegan Hicks was three years old.
Club football was ad hoc, pathways barely existed and the NRL may as well have been a different universe. For the committed few who kept the women's game going it was day-to-day as much as it was hand-to-mouth. Interstate matches were not played under the State of Origin banner and were held at suburban grounds in front of tiny crowds.
A World Cup final was the only game that could get on television and even then, only if the network was feeling generous. Footage of those days leading up to the first NRLW season in 2018 is grainy and hard to find. Even basic details of matches — things like team lists, scorers and attendances — aren't always easy to track down. Brigginshaw has been a top-level footballer for almost as long as some of her teammates have been alive.
Today it's a new world, a world Brigginshaw helped create as the premiere footballer and one of the biggest stars of the transitional era and into the early NRLW years. For proof, look no further than the words of Julia Robinson, who has played with Brigginshaw ever since that first Broncos season.
“She’s a true leader, on and off the field, she’s the heart of the Broncos, she’s going to be this legacy that carries on for generations," Robinson told ABC Sport. “She’s going to be missed, missed by the team, missed by everyone but she’ll still be around and make a big impact on the rugby league community.
”Brigginshaw was a pioneer and a trail blazer, who set a new mark and standard for others to aspire to and acted as a legend for an entire game to believe in. To see the Tricolours complete their perfect season is to see the end product of that belief. Today's players are bigger, faster, stronger and more skilful. They play together for longer and the improvements to the sport are plain to see.
They are better athletes and better footballers and so many of the best of them play at the Roosters. John Strange's side are the culmination of almost a decade of progress, the ultimate example of what's possible when a club with some serious muscle decides to really invest in a women's program.
As Brigginshaw proved what was possible for the women's game in terms of star power and sheer class, the Roosters prove what is possible when those attributes are taken to their very limit. Now they are what Brigginshaw was — a star for the entire league to sail by, and they are filled with players who can trace their lineage to the retiring Bronco.
In a cruel irony, without Brigginshaw there might be no Tarryn Aiken, who was named the Karyn Murphy medallist with a brilliant display at halfback for the Roosters or Jocelyn Kelleher, Brigginshaw's opposite number, who tortured Brisbane with her kicking game. Closer to home might be no Tamika Upton, who succeeded Brigginshaw as the world's best player but just could not get into the game for the Broncos until she set up a late try, or Jesse Southwell, who scored that try and is so clearly an evolution of an archetype that Brigginshaw pioneered — not an athlete, but a pure footballer.
She is one of the players who entered the NRLW having played league all their lives, unlike Brigginshaw who had to stop when she was 12 because there were no more teams to play on and that's just one change Brigginshaw has born witness too. Origin matches are ratings gold and attracts crowds that dwarf what they were even five years ago, the NRLW has been born and expanded twice over and the product and support is edging towards the point where a standalone grand final doesn't just feel possible, it feels like a logical step for a game that continues to grow.
Brigginshaw helped raise that profile as a mainstay in Brisbane's early premierships and a Queensland regular. She was not just a star, she was the star. She didn't just adapt to the new world, she brought it to heel as she became a legend and now retires as an icon — if they were to rename the women's Dally M after a modern player, the Ali B certainly has a fine ring to it.
When you are a player of that stature, to whom greatness has been a constant companion for years and who remained a threat right to the end — even at 36, Brisbane did not win a game this year without Brigginshaw — a grand final massacre is no way for a career to end. But as she prepares for the rest of her life, Brigginshaw leaves the game as a figure that sits astride two eras, who helped bring her game to life and make it bigger than anyone in the old days could have dreamed.
She believes in a brighter future and she knows one is possible, because she has already built one. We are living in it right now. Sports content to make you think... or allow you not to. A newsletter delivered each Saturday.
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