This week’s episode of A-Leagues All Access centres on Canberra United midfielder Grace Maher. Watch it below.
At Canberra United, Grace Maher and Nickoletta Flannery are “best mates” – and are part of a fluid attacking unit defined by the tight-knit nature of the teammates that fill it.
As footballers, they compliment each other perfectly: Maher, a magic number 10 with a wand of a left foot, spraying passes down the right wing for Flannery to attack with her blistering pace.
Yet growing up, they were rivals. Flannery of Woden Valley Soccer Club in the south of Canberra, and Maher of Majura Football Club in the north; these were two young talents whose paths were destined to intertwine throughout the following decade and beyond.
It all began on the athletics track.
“There’s a classic photo of us lining up next to each other,” Flannery says.
“We were running the ACT 100-metre final,” adds Maher.
The picture is unearthed on this week’s episode of A-Leagues All Access.
They’re stood side by side on the track, preparing to sprint off into the distance. Maher in her school’s sport shirt and shorts, Flannery with knee-high white socks, a black headband, and an oversized red singlet.
Neither recognising that, while stood alongside one another as opponents, that one day they’d become significant figures in each others’ lives.
Both Flannery and Maher have a different recollection of how the race ended:
“I think Grace won the race,” Flannery says.
“I’m pretty sure she beat me,” says Maher.
Canberra’s number 10 is the focal point of this week’s episode of A-Leagues All Access, titled No Simple Path. It follows a week in the life of a young footballer trying to make her dream a reality:
“I want to be playing football full-time, professionally,” Maher says. “I want to be in at nine (in the morning), and out at three o’clock, four o’clock, just playing, training, travelling the world and playing in the highest competitions.
“That adrenaline, that fight, that sacrifice for me is so worth it.”
The 23-year-old is making significant strides towards that goal as each Liberty A-League campaign goes by – and her almost instinctual on-field relationship with Canberra winger Flannery is helping the creative midfielder put her full array of talents on display.
Their connection as teammates, and friends, was forged at 11 years of age, when both Maher and Flannery formally met at Capital Football.
It came “a year or two” after the pair tore down the 100m track side by side; Maher immediately identified the girl in the headband as her former running foe.
Their on-field synergy was almost instantaneous.
“We both got picked as young ones, (and) formed a bond through that,” Maher says. “I played left wing, she played right wing.”
Flannery adds: “Her left foot would ping it over to my right foot, and then we’d end up getting a lot of goals from that combination.”
The pair are shown throughout the All Access episode pushing one another onwards in a Canberra gym session. There are smiles and laughs aplenty – but Flannery admits she sees a different side of the player and person she knows so well when Maher steps across the white line.
“She’s my best mate, loves to have a laugh,” Flannery says. “But on the field it’s the complete opposite.”
It’s all part and parcel of a footballer whose desperation to fulfil her potential as a player knows no bounds.
Michelle Heyman is a Canberra icon, a Matildas legend and the Liberty A-League’s record goalscorer who, should her supreme scoring streak continue, could become the first ever player to reach the 100-goal mark in the league’s history before the end of this season.
Heyman sees it, too.
“She’s got that mentality of a winner,” Heyman says of her teammate Maher. “Seeing her in every single day, training sessions, that’s where it all starts. She just has so much confidence in herself, in her ability.”
Watch A-Leagues All Access Episode 17 | No Simple Path
Produced by KEEPUP Studios and JAMTV, each new episode of the docuseries will debut on Thursday at 7:30pm AEDT on 10 Play, KEEPUP.COM.AU, the KEEPUP app. It will be available on Australia’s fastest growing streaming service, Paramount+, and will then be broadcast on 10 Bold at 2:00pm AEDT on Sunday afternoons as an appetiser for the evening’s Isuzu UTE A-League Men game on the same channel.
