Renee Forth joint best afield for Woodville-West Torrens Eagles in SANFLW

Mid West AFLW flag winner Renee Forth continued a run of solid performances for Woodville-West Torrens in the South Australian league on Saturday.

Forth’s Eagles side went down to Glenelg by 10 points in the SANFLW at Hisense Stadium but they made the Tigers fight for everything.

The game finished 6.1 (47) to 5.7 (37).

Forth was joint best afield for her team with Shineah Goody.

She grabbed the most marks of any Eagle, with eight.

She also had the second-most disposals with 18, 15 of them by foot, as well as five tackles and six rebound 50s.

The Eagles were ahead until half-time before losing their grip on the match.

They almost clawed it back late but the Tigers got over the line.

A shift down back has brought out a different aspect to Forth’s game.

The Eagles are still outside the four but are only fractionally behind fifth-placed South Adelaide on percentage.

They play North Adelaide next Saturday and could mathematically go fourth.

Their performance so far is a far cry from 2021 when the team finished in eighth with 205 points scored in 11 games.

This season they have 138 points from four games.

“Before this year, finals would never have been in our vocabulary but this year has the potential to be different,” Forth said.

From Buller River, near Geraldton, Forth won two flags in the old WA Women’s Football League with Coastal Titans in the 2010s.

She was the first ever women’s captain for Fremantle, leading the Dockers out in the first women’s western derby before the AFLW.

She was picked up by Greater Western Sydney as a marquee player and then became Adelaide’s first AFLW trade, winning the flag in 2019 with the Crows.

Forth said she hoped her career was an inspiration for the new generation of players heading from the Mid West to bigger things.

“I really hope playing AFLW is a goal for many young female players back home,” she said.