Zarlie Goldsworthy Is Done Carrying the Weight of Losses
There are footy players who carry every loss home with them like a backpack full of bricks, and there are players who’ve figured out how to leave it at the ground. Zarlie Goldsworthy used to be firmly in the first camp — and honestly, given what she’s been through at GWS, you could completely understand why.
The Giants have spent more than their fair share of time in the bottom half of the AFLW ladder. When you’re a genuinely elite talent on a team that’s rebuilding, finding, and sometimes losing its footing, it’s brutal. The losses add up. The “what could have been” moments stack on top of each other until they’re all you can see. For a player with Goldsworthy’s competitiveness and skill, that had to sting in a very particular way.
But something has shifted. And I reckon it’s one of the more quietly compelling storylines in the competition right now.
The Burden of Being the Bright Light on a Struggling Team
Let’s be real about what Zarlie Goldsworthy has had to navigate. When you’re consistently one of the best players on a club that isn’t winning enough games, there’s this weird tension that builds. You want to drag the team forward — and sometimes you do, and it’s still not enough. That’s a specific kind of heartbreak that fans on the outside don’t always fully appreciate.
I see it sometimes with Lions players too, the way a midfielder or a key forward can play the game of their life and the team still loses by thirty. It hollows you out if you let it. And Goldsworthy, by her own admission, was letting it. She was carrying those results like they were hers alone to own.
The thing is, that kind of weight doesn’t just affect your mental health off the field. It follows you into the next training session, into the next game, into every contest. It’s not sustainable. The best players eventually have to make a choice about how much of the team’s collective failure they’re willing to absorb personally — and how to stay hungry without being consumed.
\h2>Learning to Let It Go (Without Losing the Fire)
Goldsworthy has talked about developing a healthier relationship with results — learning to process a loss, acknowledge it, and then genuinely move on rather than dragging it into the next week. That sounds simple when you write it out, but legit, it is one of the hardest things elite athletes have to master. Some never do.
What I find interesting is the balance she’s trying to strike. Because there’s a version of “letting it go” that tips over into not caring, and that’s obviously not what she’s after. The competitive fire that makes her one of the most exciting players in the AFLW doesn’t go away just because she stops torturing herself about losses she couldn’t have prevented on her own. If anything, learning to let go probably gives that fire more oxygen.
It’s a bit like, and stay with me here, the way Brisbane’s Lions women’s group talks about process. You can’t control the scoreboard at the final siren. You can control your effort, your decision-making, your connection with teammates. When you start measuring yourself against the things you can actually influence, the results start looking after themselves more often than not. Goldsworthy seems to be landing in a similar headspace.
About That Video, Though
Okay, we have to talk about the thing that everyone who follows Goldsworthy on social media knows about. She has referred to a particular clip from earlier in her career — apparently something filmed when she was younger and deep in her Giants journey — as the “stupid video” she cannot escape.
She hasn’t gone into enormous detail about it publicly, but the gist is that it follows her around. Whether it pops up in her own feed, gets shared by fans, or gets dug out by someone trying to be funny, it keeps resurfacing. And rather than being mortified by it or trying to bury it, she’s kind of leaned into the absurdity of the situation.
There’s something very 2020s athlete about that, honestly. The social-media generation of footballers grew up knowing that the internet never forgets. There is no deleted past when someone has already screenshotted it. The players who handle that best are the ones who can laugh at themselves — who don’t need every piece of their public persona to be curated and polished. Goldsworthy seems to genuinely have that quality.
And no notes from me on that approach, by the way. Owning the embarrassing thing is almost always more endearing than pretending it doesn’t exist. Footy fans love a player who can take the mickey out of themselves.
Why Goldsworthy Matters for the AFLW’s Next Chapter
I want to zoom out for a second, because I think the Goldsworthy story is bigger than just one player finding her groove. She is exactly the kind of talent the AFLW needs front and centre as the competition grows.
She’s exciting to watch. She creates moments that end up in highlight packages. She’s young enough to be a face of the competition for the next decade if she wants to be, and she’s at a Giants side that is slowly accumulating the pieces to become genuinely competitive. When GWS starts putting it all together — and there are signs they’re heading that direction — Goldsworthy being in a better headspace is going to make a real difference to how far they can go.
The AFLW is at this really interesting inflection point where the quality on field has jumped noticeably, the crowds are growing (especially in Queensland, which I will absolutely spruik every chance I get), and the conversation around women’s footy is shifting from “isn’t it great that this exists” to “this is seriously good football”. Players like Goldsworthy are part of why that shift is happening.
The Mental Side Is Finally Being Talked About
One more thing worth saying: the fact that Goldsworthy is openly discussing the emotional toll of sustained losing and how she’s had to actively work to manage it is genuinely importnat. Not just for fans, but for young players watching.
There’s still this idea floating around football culture that elite athletes should be mentally bulletproof by default — that caring too much or struggling with results is somehow a weakness. It isn’t. It’s human. And the more experienced players talk honestly about the psychological work they do to stay competitive and healthy, the easier it becomes for the next generation to approach those same challenges without feeling like they’re failing.
The AFLW space has been pretty good at this, actually. There’s a culture of openness in the competition that doesn’t always exist in the men’s game at the same level. Whether that’s because of the journeys these women have been on to get here, or the kind of people the sport attracts, or something else entirely — it makes the competition feel more human and more real.
What I’m Watching For
Going forward, I want to see how Goldsworthy translates this new mindset into sustained performance across a full season. The best version of her — confident, released from the weight of every result, backed by a Giants team that’s finding its feet — is going to be a serious problem for a lot of opponents.
And somewhere out there, that stupid video is waiting for its next moment in the sun. At least she’ll be laughing when it finds her again.
The AFLW is better for having Zarlie Goldsworthy in it. The competition is better for players who are honest about the hard parts. And honestly? A bit of self-deprecating humour about a cringeworthy old clip never hurt anyone either.
