Abbey Holmes takes football/netball legacy from Victor Harbor, South Australia, to national AFL profile
Abbey Holmes as part of Adelaide Football Club 2017 women's premiership team (top left) and with the Seven Network AFL (Australian Football league) television commentary team (bottom left). She joined the 2024 committee selecting the AFL All-Australian squad/team and other major awards.
Images courtesy Wikipedia (by Flcikerd), the Seven Network and Australian Football League
Abbey Holmes in 2024 was recognised nationally by Australian rules football for her skills, knowledge and poise that were instilled from her childhood in the South Australian town of Victor Harbor.
Holmes, an Adelaide Football Club premiership player who became part of the Seven Network AFL (Australian Football league) television commentary team, joined the 2024 committee selecting the AFL All-Australian squad and team, the 2024 Virgin Mark of the Year, the 2024 NAB AFL Goal of the Year, and the Ron Evans medal for the 2024 AFL Rising Star Award.
Holmes was born in 1991 in Victor Harbor where her father was the town’s football club president and her mother heavily involved in its netball club. Holmes started playing netball in Victor Harbor and continued when her family moved to Adelaide where, at 15, she represented South Australia at the Australian national netball championships. At 16, she represented Australia in an international schoolgirls tournament and was going to play for South Australia at a national under-19 level championship but was blocked by a knee injury.
Holmes moved to Darwin in 2012 with her partner Nathan Brown, formerly with West Adelaide and North Adelaide clubs the South Australian National Football League, who was playing in the Northern Territory Football League. Holmes planned to resume netball in Darwin but also began with Waratahs club in the territory’s women’s football competition. In her first four seasons, she was both the league's leading goalkicker and a premiership player with Waratah. In 2014, she was the first to kick 100 goals in a season in an established women's football league, with 105 including 16 goals in one match.
Holmes' profile saw her picked to play in a West End Slowdown exhibition game in Adelaide, where she was named player of the match with Adelaide Football Club legend Andrew McLeod.
After her fourth premiership with the Waratahs in 2016, injury again prevented her playing for the St Kilda Sharks in the Victoria Women’s Football league. Instead, Holmes started to work for the Seven Network as the boundary rider for their television coverage of the Victorian Football League.
Holmes was drafted by Adelaide Football Club for the inaugural season in 2017 of its women’s team and was part of its premiership.
Delisted by Adelaide club in 2018, Holmes started as commentator for the Seven Network’s AFL and AFLW coverage working as expert commentator and boundary rider. In 2022, she on the commentary team for the network's coverage of the 2022 Comonwealth Games in Birmingham.
In 2019, Holmes competed in the sixth season of television’s Austrralian Survivor, eliminated on day 46 and finished fifth. She returned on Australian Survivor All Stars the next season and was placed 19th.
In 2023, Holmes married Keegan Brooksby, who played for South Australian National Football League club South Adelaide in the footsteps of his father Phil and uncle Graham. South Adelaide club’s territory included Victor Harbor.