AS AUSTRALIAN women’s cricket’s pre-eminent Test, ODI and T20 leg spinner, Alana King can rightly be considered a citizen of the world - the summer game taking her to the length and breadth of the land, and beyond its shores to Europe and the sub-continent.
And yet for King, the Carlton Football Club is well and truly home - the daughter of Indian-born parents having followed the old dark Navy Blues from as far back as she can remember.
Recently, having completed her weekend Melbourne commitments with the touring Perth Scorchers team, King took the liberty of paying a sentimental journey back to Ikon Park – and she was totally gobsmacked by what she saw.
“I am mind-blown. This redevelopment is something I’ve never seen before. The layout is phenomenal,” King said.
“Obviously footy clubs are a lot bigger than their cricket equivalents, but it’s the sheer size of the facility that is so impressive. The gym is huge, I’ve never seen a gym like it, and I was also impressed by the theatrette and its multi-purpose use for things like for video analysis when analysis of the game is so important. Then there’s the recovery area, the pool and that indoor kicking area with the full-size goalposts set up. ,
“If this was my facility I would want to come here to train. What it’s telling you is that there’s no excuse not to get better. It’s all new, it’s all fresh, and it motivates you to use it as much as you can – which comes down from the culture of the people of the footy club itself who want to make sure their athletes are getting the best of the best.”
King’s father Leroy and mother Sharon, both born in Chennai, married in 1989, the same year they migrated to Australia.
A chef by profession, Leroy first found lodgings for him and his wife in Glenhuntly and later settled in south-eastern Clarinda. By then, he’d inherited a football team to support and Carlton rather brilliantly was it.
Alana herself was born in November 1995, some seven weeks after Stephen Kernahan raised Carlton’s last piece of silverware – and she was not yet four when she saw her beloved Blues run out for the first time – in the 14th Round of 1999 against Hawthorn at VFL Park, on what doubled as Craig Bradley’s 300th game for the Club.
A grainy family photograph, captured in the driveway of the King family home that day – features Alana in her Carlton jumper wielding a club flag – and older brother Marc hoisting a placard featuring the words “CRAIG BRADLEY YOU’RE A HERO”.
“Carlton won the game for Craig Bradley, and I still have that flag,” Alana said.
“That was a phenomenal game, and I’ll always remember standing on the seats at the end screaming the Carlton song at the top of my lungs - and these ladies behind me being gobsmacked that I knew all the words even though I was so young.
“Dad took my brother and I to that game at Waverley and he also took us to games here at Princes Park in the early 2000s, so I’d love it if Dad was able to see these new facilities too.
“The other point to make about these facilities is that they stand on what is the spiritual home, where Carlton has always been and always will be.
“This is the heart and soul of Carlton, and the new facilities create an even deeper connection for people like me who have always known Princes Park as home.”
In taking the tour, King met both the Carlton President Luke Sayers and the CEO Brian Cook, who presented her with a Carlton guernsey signed by all of the Club’s senior-listed players of 2022.
Along the way she chatted to Michael Voss, Carlton players Charlie Curnow, Sam Durdin and Lewis Young and posed for photographs by both the AFLW and AFL lockers – at the No.32 of Nat Plane (with whom King had once played junior cricket for the state) and at the No.43 of her all-time favourite Anthony Koutoufides – whom she would later meet by chance in the main foyer of IKON Park.
“I was a bit gobsmacked to meet them all on the same day, and to meet the President, CEO and Senior Coach was pretty special,” King said. “What Luke, Brian and Michael are doing is really benefitting the entire club, and I’m really rapt to see ‘Vossy’ coaching the Club he used to support as a kid. To see the massive change in the way the players played under him this year was so bloody exciting.
From wherever she is in the world, King follows the fortunes of Carlton’s AFL and AFLW teams with a genuine fervour – and she’s particularly upbeat about the men’s prospects in the aftermath of a long, solid rebuild.
“I was away for most of the men’s season but fortunately I was able to keep abreast of the scores through the commentary,” King said.
“I was a bit shocked that we couldn’t clinch that last game to make finals, but there’s not a game involving the Blues that I’ve missed wherever I am in the world. They will always have my support.
“And I can tell you that the jersey I was given will proudly hang on a wall of my new place in Perth as a little reminder of my real home.”
