The long-time Ainslie player will take to the field in her 200^th game for the club on Saturday, the first female player to reach the milestone for the club.

In the early days, Curcio said, players got excited when they had enough show up to field a team, even when they lost by margins of 100 or 200 points.

"Now there's 18 teams, there's three different leagues and they've managed to put them into first grade and second grade," Curcio said.

"You've actually got some pretty even competition going now and some really good skills. It has been amazing to see the increasing numbers of girls playing."

Curcio started playing for Ainslie in 2001 when she was 15 after a year training with Belconnen when that club was trying to put a junior team together, which never happened.

"Then I had someone I knew from an old sport who was the coach of Ainslie. They said come on over and play and I was like, 'I think I'm a bit young'. But it was the best thing I ever did," Curcio said.

A knee injury in 2007 only strengthened Curcio's resolve to keep playing, after she had to stay off the field for two seasons. She managed the team and helped around the club, but it wasn't the same as playing.

"I think at one stage I was running water for them but not playing. The ball came near me and I had to run away from it and that completely went against all my instincts, to run away from the ball instead of to it," Curcio said.

"I said to myself, 'I can't do this, I've got to get back out there'."

That was more than a decade a go and Curcio has no intention of hanging up the boots yet.

She concedes she would probably be close to 100 by the time she chalked up her 300th game, but there's still no sign of slowing down.

"We've got to get a premiership!" she said.

When she's not playing football, Curcio is an ACT firefighter based at the Ainslie fire station and she said the footy training helped her to keep fit for work.

While other people have lives that get too busy, with other commitments taking people off the field long before they reach 200 games, Curcio said she still managed to find the time to play.

"I try and work shifts around it as much as I can, using up bits of leave where I can to try and not miss too many games," she said.

But even though the fire station is right next to the oval, it hasn't been a very successful recruiting spot.

"We've had a couple come and try but just a few other commitments with kids and things, so they haven't stuck around," Curcio said.

"But we've had a few that have been interested and are hoping to come back and play a few games this year."

Word-of-mouth recruitment has been key to women's AFL and Curcio said it was why the number of female players had grown as much as it had in the last few years.

Junior leagues encouraged younger girls to stick with the sport and build their skill levels and confidence before running out with the seniors.

"A lot of young girls were scared off earlier and they went to other sports whereas now they can pick AFL and stay there," she said.

The AFLW had also driven a numbers boost, and if the league was around when Curcio was younger she reckoned she would have tried to make the grade.

"I can't say I would have made it, but definitely would have given it a go," she said.

A win would be the best reward for Curcio's 200^th game and she was confident after Ainslie's large win against Tuggeranong last week.

"We won our first game pretty well and the team really jelled together as a close-knit unit, so hopefully we can take a bit of confidence from that," she said.

Saturday: Round 2: Ainslie Tricolours v Belconnen Magpies at Alan Ray Oval, Queanbeyan Tigers v Tuggeranong at Margaret Donoghue Oval