Darcy Vescio’s 100 Games Prove Why AFLW Deserves More Respect
Darcy Vescio is about to do something no other Carlton AFLW player has done before them, and honestly, it’s taken me way too long to write this because I kept getting distracted rewatching their highlight reels. A hundred games. Let that sit for a sec, because when this competition kicked off back in 2017, nobody was promising anyone a hundred games of anything.
For a comp that’s barely out of its toddler years, reaching triple figures is legit historic. And the way Vescio has gone about it, with a game style that’s equal parts maths teacher and magician, makes the milestone hit different.
The habit nobody can coach out of them
If you’ve watched even five minutes of Vescio footy, you know the habit I’m talking about. The low-percentage snaps from impossible angles. The checkside punts that look like they’re going wide until suddenly they’re not. The backwards-over-the-head efforts that make commentators lose their minds. It’s the kind of stuff that makes your nan cover her eyes and your footy-mad mate scream at the telly in the same breath.
Vescio themself has copped a bit of flak for it over the years. Coaches want the simple option, the handball to the unmarked teammate, the safe entry inside fifty. Vescio, more often than not, backs their own eye and has a crack from the boundary line instead. It’s uncomfortable to watch sometimes, by their own admission, because when it doesn’t come off it looks reckless. But when it does come off, and it does more than you’d think, it’s an absolute scene.
And that’s the thing that gets lost in the discourse around
