Tongala footballer Ruby McLeod has had an envious start to her career, winning a second successive premiership in the Northern Country Women’s League at just 14.
One Tongala teenage footballer wearing blue and yellow has turned a lot of heads during the 2024 football season, but it is not who you might think.
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Ruby McLeod, 14, will be embarrassed by any comparison to one of her football heroes, fellow Tongala Primary School graduate Harley Reid, so we will stop short of comparing the two.
McLeod was a wide-eyed infant level student at Tongala when Reid was finishing his education at the Miller Street school where his photo hangs in a Victoria Country guernsey alongside the entrance to the school.
She is now starting to make her way, albeit a few rungs beneath the lofty heights that the town’s most famous recent football product is plying his trade at, in the sport that is at the centre of her every thought.
One thing McLeod now has on her bedside table, that West Coast’s Reid will be envious of, is a pair of premiership medals.
She has now been a member of back-to-back Northern Country Women’s League Youth Girls premiership teams — last year with Shepparton Swans and this year with Echuca United.
The Tongala teenager has reinforced the theory that pressure makes diamonds by conquering the challenges of changing clubs, being elevated to the highest junior level with the Bendigo Pioneers Coates Talent League squad and then having a key role with United in a grand final.
She kicked two goals for Echuca United in the premiership victory, taking her total to 36 for the season.
Alongside Jerrah Caruso (three goals in the grand final and 42 for the season) McLeod was a star in the 19-point grand final win at Deakin Reserve against Shepparton United a fortnight ago.
Caruso crossed to Echuca United with McLeod this season and the pair was joined by a handful of Moama players who had been involved in two losing grand finals.
Echuca United was unbeaten in its 14 home and away games this year, beating its grand final opponent by 81 points in round six and by 43 points the second time they met only a month or so before the finals.
Ruby McLeod and her Echuca United Youth Girls team were premiers of the Northern Contry Women’s League this year.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
It was a big turnaround for the team which won only two games last year and finished second bottom on the ladder.
McLeod kicked three goals in the 56-point semi-final win against Moama as her team went into the grand final an unbackable favourite.
Among United’s regular domination of the other clubs was a 21-goal win (McLeod topped the goal-kicking with four in that game) and nine other games where United kicked 90 points or beyond and kept its opponent to three goals or less.
McLeod featured in the pages of the Free Press this time last year when she was a member of the Shepparton Swans’ under-18 Northern Country league premiership team despite being 13 years old.
She hasn’t lost a Northern Country league game for two years now, the Swans having gone through the 2023 season unbeaten.
McLeod also kicked two goals in that grand final win and was rewarded at the end of the season with selection in the under-15 Goulburn Murray V/Line Cup team.
This year, on the back of those results, she was a member of the Bendigo Pioneers under-16 girls team (despite being a bottom age player) in the opening two rounds.
Since then she has represented the Goulburn Murray at under-18 level and registered a career high six goals in a single game — ironically against her former team Shepparton Swans in round 13.
In two games this season she has returned bags of four goals and kicked three on four occasions this year.
It is a big return considering her eight games last year netted just five goals, although she did play more in the midfield and was recognised among the Swans’ best in five games.
McLeod, who won’t turn 15 until October, will remain a part of the Pioneers’ junior program which will again involve two under-16 squad games.
The Kyabram P-12 College Year 9 student will also be part of the Pioneers team that contests the September V/Line Cup.
In the meantime she will be closely following the fortunes of Essendon’s AFLW team, having been part of a clinic and Q&A when the team was in Shepparton recently for its pre-season training camp.
McLeod was not, however, impressed on Saturday night when the Bombers’ season was effectively ended at the hand of an after-the-siren goal by the Gold Coast Suns’ Mac Andrew.
A saving grace was the performance of her other favourite team, Reid’s West Coast, which came from behind to win against North Melbourne.
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