Your typical eight-hour shift is more than enough to take the wind out of anyone’s sails.
Heavy legs, tired eyes. Thoughts slowly – but surely – drift towards the sweet release that walking through the front door and crashing on the couch will bring.
For Bianca Jakobsson, it’s a luxury time can’t afford.
The birds aren’t even singing when First Constable Jakobsson reports in for duty at Dandenong Police Station.
She’s up at 5:00 in the morning and relieving the nightshift a touch over an hour later, filling in reams of paperwork – there’s a lot in the policing world – before spending the next nine hours two-up in the van, patrolling and responding to emergency calls around the Dandenong area.
A typical shift can start with more than 10 jobs on the plate. Time for even a bite to eat isn’t a guarantee, but a day of emotional and physical exhaustion is. All throughout, there’s the persistent hope of no overtime so she can clock out on time.
Knock-off won’t come until at least 11:00pm, however.
There isn’t even time for a quick-change.
A dash down the Nepean – with Jakobsson still in her police uniform – to get to RSEA Park and complete a full training session is next on the agenda. Much like when she’s on-duty as a policewoman, there isn’t the option to cruise through the next few hours.
Meetings, reviews, training, gym. By the time she gets home with a 40-minute drive back to Cranbourne to-boot, she’s put in a 16-hour shift.
A mere six hours’ rest is a win in Jakobsson’s book. Hit the hay, hope for a good night’s sleep and do it all again. And again. And again.
It’s a struggle battling the demands of both worlds. Succeeding in both is even tougher. A Best & Fairest to her name from April just gone is a testament to that.
Even still, the days are long; the toll – physical and mental – even more taxing.
Exceeding 60-hour weeks on top of her football commitments and game-day while working full-time operational hours for Victoria Police used to be the regular. But the stresses of juggling two professions is the norm for those in the AFLW sphere.
Sacrifices are made to keep both worlds afloat, often at one’s personal loss.
With Season Seven of the AFLW unexpectedly being brought forward to August, Jakobsson cut her hours back to part-time and transferred into the intelligence division.
The 15kg of gear she’d usually wear has been shed with the transfer from operational to intelligential duties, but the weight of pressure to maintain both at a high standard remains.
In a word, it’s exhausting. But even then, that word doesn’t quite do it justice.
It’s not the first sacrifice Jakobsson has had to make.
Before arriving at St Kilda, the former Demon stepped away from AFLW ahead of Season 2020 to complete her Police Academy training. It was an agonising decision she stewed on for weeks, but deep down, knew she wasn’t able to give her all to both.
The recent pay increase to AFLW players across the industry has meant that many players, like Jakobsson, no longer need to work full-time on top of football to make a living. It’s far more manageable now to what it was before, but the ‘double-shift’ and other sacrifices to keep both plates spinning remains.
There’s a fraction more time to unwind with things as simple as reading a book or taking the dogs out for a walk now. It’s a slice oh so small, but has meant a great deal for Jakobsson’s own state of mind and inner balance.
A trip overseas with her partner, Darcy Guttridge, is on the cards in the coming months.
It will be the couple’s first trip abroad after five years together, which has been interrupted by work, a global pandemic and most recently, two AFLW seasons crammed into one calendar year. This Christmas will be the first summer in six years that she will be free of AFLW commitments, with the season start-date moving to spring rather than summer come 2023.
But for all the sleep-deprived nights, personal struggles and hardships, Jakobsson wouldn’t change anything.
She knows the hard work had to be done to get to the point where AFLW players can now balance dual careers far more sustainably and to less personal detriment. The game is changing, and Jakobsson can’t wait for the day where AFLW becomes a full-time profession.
“At the end of the day, we all love footy,” she says.
“We all would do anything just to play.”
Photography by Lucy Edwards and Morgan Hancock.
