Louise Knitter first began playing footy in a boys’ team in Koonga Valley after her family’s move to WA from Geelong.
Two years later in 1996 at age 14, she was asked to join the women’s team but was too young. However, her mum changed her age on her birth certificate so she could play, kickstarting her football journey.
From then, Knitter went on to win the best first year women’s player at only 14 during her first season, as well as best and fairest for multiple consecutive years.
Almost three decades later, Knitter celebrated playing 400 games of footy alongside her Kelmscott Bulldog teammates on the weekend.
She said after trialing many different teams in Perth, she found her sporting family with the Bulldogs.
“All the teams I went to ended up folding due to people getting pregnant or getting injured or focusing on other things,” she said.
“I moved to Kelmscott for the trial and just never left because everyone welcomed me to the club.
“There was a 400th celebration at my house on Saturday, and people brought their kids because they felt safe that they could bring them to a house party rather than at a pub.”
Knitter has played for many different teams at different levels of football, but said playing 400 games made her feel different about the sport.
“I felt less pressure,” Knitter said about Saturday’s game.
“I’ve played 400 games. I’ve done what I needed to do. I just wanted to go out and enjoy myself and have a laugh.”
During a semifinal game in earlier years, Knitter suffered a horrific injury which forced her to briefly retire from football before she joined the WA Women’s Football League.
“I’ve had quite a few nasty injuries, I tore my ACL when I was 16, so I had a year off the following year.” Knitter said about her football journey.
“And then I was playing in a semifinal. As you do, I put my body on the line, went up into a pack and someone kneed me in the stomach and split my pancreas.
“They took out two thirds of my pancreas so the doctor said ‘you can’t play contact sport. If it happens again, you’ll probably die’.
“So, I played Gaelic football and managed to tour Australia with that and even went to New Zealand. It was great but then I missed the physical side of AFL and that’s the year I went to Swan Districts.
“I decided to go back to WAWFL straight into it, and that’s also where I got my first premiership of my whole career.”
As a woman dedicated to football, Knitter said it was great to see women have more opportunities.
“I remember it was about 2010 and Jan Cooper, who was a pioneer of the AFLW came up to me and she said, ‘you watch in 10 years’ time, there’ll be an AFL women’s.’ And I just laughed at her,” she said.
“No one really watched our football games, even at Swan Districts level it wasn’t that well recognised. We were just happy to be out there and playing.
“It’s so good to see the opportunities women have.”
Knitter said playing 400 games was something she would remember as a career highlight.
“It was an honour to be recognised, not just by my teammates but by the opposition,” she said.
“They were standing in the guard of honour, and clapping me off and congratulating me, hugging me. For me, that was the special moment on game day because you don’t get a lot of that.
“Pretty much in every photo, even in the warmups and in the change rooms I had the biggest smile. I was just so happy the whole day.”
The Bulldogs won 56 to 26 against Coolbellup Cats at Saturday’s game, and are next set to play on June 7 on Kelmscott home ground at John Dunn Memorial Park against Kalamunda.
