Jenny was the first woman from SA to be awarded the AFL Football Woman of the Year award for her contribution to the sport.
As a tiny toddler, ‘footy’ was possibly the third word Jenny Williams ever uttered after ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’.
Afterall by the time she was born, the Williams family was immersed in the Port Adelaide Football Club, and her three younger brothers all followed their father, Fos, into the same all-consuming environment.
With no women’s football available to her in the 1960s, Jenny expressed her skills and passions across a multitude of sports – soccer, cricket, basketball and ultimately finding enormous success in lacrosse.
Then in 1990 and having graduated with a Bachelor of Education majoring in PE, Jenny led the organisation of an interstate women’s football challenge: SA v Victoria, recruiting athletes from other sports to make up the teams.
It was a major success, Jenny captaining SA to victory and awarded Best on Ground.
As the then Women’s Advisor to the Minister for Recreation and Sport, Jenny stepped in to lend a valuable hand in helping structure what would become the SA Women’s Football League.
Some 12 years later, in 2003, Jenny was the first woman from SA to be awarded the AFL Football Woman of the Year award for her contribution to the sport.
Combining her physical education degree and deep understanding of the game, she also wrote the curriculum for and conducted Year 12 Australian Rules Football classes as part of the South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE) Work Education Unit.
