The mother-of-two is a fanatical AFL fan who grew up in Melbourne. The diehard Richmond supporter moved to Sydney and then onto the Hastings.

After moving to Port Macquarie with husband Ben in 2009 shortly after the birth of son Gilbert, they became an important part of the club. Williams is now being celebrated for her contributions as the Magpies mark the club's 40^th anniversary.

Williams is not too keen on the black and white of the Magpies (which has been synonymous with Collingwood Magpies in the national AFL competition), but at the end of the day it's just a colour, she says.

Richmond and Collingwood have a strong rivalry.

"I'm not too keen on that, but they're the Port Magpies. We'll keep Collingwood out of it altogether," she laughed.

Last month was the AFL's inaugural Women's Coaching Month which gave football communities across the country the opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate women coaching the game.

Williams said her interest in the game was solidified after Gilbert and 10-year-old daughter Edith picked up their first footy.

"I enjoyed the Sunday mornings watching them both play and then thought I should volunteer to do a job," she said.

"Initially it was just helping out the coach as a manager and then the year after that I put my hand up to coach my son's team.

"The Port Magpies are just a great club. President Luke White has really good values and it was very inviting and helpful so when I put my hand up to coach that really helped."

The emergence of women's footy in recent years has seen Williams enjoy her time even more, but there have been challenges along the way.

"I didn't think we were going to get a Youth girls team," she said.

"But then we had a few numbers and were told to persist because the nature of young girls is they won't do it unless their friends are doing it.

"We started the team with really low numbers and then almost doubled the numbers in three weeks after the comp started so I'm glad we did.

"I thought it was important for me to push through with the Youth girls team so that in the future if my daughter wanted to continue to play AFL there was that option for her and other girls who may want to play a contact sport."

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