The Canberra native last month accepted the job of senior coach for the Adelaide Crows' women's team. She also works full time for Australian Federal Police, fighting the creation of child exploitation material and its spread online.

In Melbourne last week for the AFL coaches' awards, Goddard was straightforward and enthusiastic. She smiles a lot.

Her new job at the Crows is a dream come true. After playing for 10 years, she broke a leg and was forced to retire, so instead took up umpiring and then coaching.

She has since been in charge of both men's and women's teams, often for little or no pay.

Indeed when she became assistant coach of the Queanbeyan Tigers, in a town over the border from the ACT where she lived, Goddard sold her car and bought a much smaller, more fuel-efficient one to save on petrol costs.

As with so many grassroots volunteers, love of the game kept her involved, even though not every experience was welcoming.

Goddard encountered sexism when umpiring and coaching lower grades, but gained more respect as she began to work with higher grades. She said higher quality sides and competitions recognised that she was involved because she had knowledge and skills to share.

"I had some really awful things said to me as a female umpiring men's football,: she said. "But the better I got at umpiring and the higher up I went, as soon I blew the whistle and made the first correct decision, there was no discussion about any of that other stuff."

She said she adapts her style of communication according to whether she is coaching men or women. She finds female footballers have often been starved of professional guidance andare particularly open to new information.

"When you meet with a male footballer about his performance, or you go into a team meeting, they have an idea of what they want to get out of that meeting," he said.

"With female footballers, they are sponges for information, because they've not had the opportunity to play at that high level before, or implement structures, or to get one-on-one feedback. They've never had that."

Goddard's workplace is also a traditionally male environment. She has been with the AFP for 15 years and travelled to work in Bali after the second bombing.

Now she is part of a team working to halt the creation of exploitation material, its spread online and child grooming and trafficking. Goddard said it was satisfying to be involved in the important work of protecting children and educating parents on how to keep them safe.

She finds balance through her work in football and when in Canberra plays guitar in a cover band.

Goddard said her career in the police force had taught her to be prepared for everything and anything – that is something she tries to pass on to her players.

"There are circumstances you may never expect are ever going to come up and that's what I said to the girls in Adelaide - we have to expect the unexpected, we don't get nervous about it, we just get ready for it," she said.

The Adelaide women's team will be split, with some players based in South Australia and some in the Northern Territory. Goddard last week flew up to visit the Darwin players who have already been selected by the Crows.

They will spend a couple of camps together and otherwise keep in touch vis electronic means. Goddard is not letting it faze her too much – she remembers coaching an NSW/ACT side, where half the players were in Sydney and the other half in Canberra. She and players would drive to meet in Goulburn and train in a paddock in order to spend time together.

A bigger challenge will be the relative underdevelopment of the women's game in South Australia, even though it is a passionate AFL state.

When the under-18 girls All-Australian team was announced last month, just one was from South Australia - former state basketballer Anne Hatchard. Eight Victorian girls were named and five from WA.

Goddard said she she was well aware that South Australia was starting from behind when it came to growing the women's game, but she was passionate about the task.

She is looking at recruiting women with experience at an elite level in other sports - 31-year-old former Olympic basketballer Erin Phillips was a high-profile signing - as they could set an example in terms of their professionalism and commitment to training.

"Even just going to training three nights a week, after working all day ... there are many girls in our state who won't be used to that. But it has to start somewhere," she said.

Goddard said she expected the Victorian teams and, in particular, Fremantle - the only women's team in WA - to be be very strong when AFL Women's kicks off in February. But she said she was lucky to be at the Adelaide Crows, a team with a passionate fan base in South Australia, because that inspired recruitment.

"Little girls growing up have seen the Adelaide Crows and their dads have played, they just want to play football," she said.

Goddard said female basketballers and soccer players had tried out at the recent AFL draft combine in South Australia and she would like to see some of them play more than one sport at the elite level.

"It may even put pressure on those other sports to play more as well, I think that would be a great thing," she said.

Goddard met the male players at the Crows for the first time after their devastating round 23 loss to West Coast. Even before going into their team meeting, star small forward Eddie Betts went out of his way to shake her hand and welcome her to the club.

"For him to be thinking about that as he's come off the ground, just a week before finals after losing, says a lot to me about where the Crows are at and what the players at the club think," she said.

Goddard senses that while most male AFL players feel positively towards having a women's team as part of the club, some of the old guard dislike it.

Former coach Graham Cornes has said that women playing football did not look right. However, Goddard said she recently spoke at a function and Cornes had approached her afterwards. She said he told her that even though he was not a big supporter of women's football, if she ever wanted him to go to one of her team's training sessions, he would do so.

Goddard saw that as progress.