JANELLE Cuthbertson is an open book. And boy, does she have a story to tell. 

The Port Adelaide defender is a gentle and calming soul, but tough as nails as soon as she steps onto the football field. 

A former tennis player (ranked just outside of the top 100 in the world as a junior), there was a time when she thought she would never play tennis, or any sport for that matter, again. 

Between a combination of injury, burnout and a serious health diagnosis, Janelle has been at a crossroads more than once in her life.  

Joining Port Adelaide ahead of the 2023 NAB AFLW season was the result of one of those crossroads, and it’s been one of the best decisions she’s made. 

“As soon as I came to the club and I met Juliet Haslam, Lauren Arnell and a few others, it just felt so easy,” Janelle said. 

“I remember going back to the hotel after my visit to the club and feeling like a child, I had butterflies in my stomach. I hadn’t had that feeling in a long time and I called mum and said ‘mum, I'm moving to Adelaide’. From that moment, it was a huge relief knowing I'd made my decision.” 

Growing up in Perth, with mum Anya, dad Alan and older brother Marc, Janelle found she had a knack for sport from a young age. 

It was soccer and tennis early on, with the latter the code that eventually stole her heart. 

“We're a super tight knit family,” she said. 

“As a kid, I always wanted to follow Marc and do what he was doing and as a kid he played soccer and tennis. I was a little tomboy and always running around behind him. When he was playing soccer, if it was mum's turn to wash the team strips, I'd take them out of the washing and put one on, put Marc’s boots on and run around the backyard. I was a really active kid.” 

By the age of 13, Janelle was attending Applecross High, a school in Perth with a specialist tennis program. She was quickly becoming adept at juggling the demands of a high-performance athlete. 

But it wasn’t just Janelle that made sacrifices to meet those demands, but also her parents, who dealt with early mornings and late nights, while working multiple jobs to support their daughter. 

“Mum and dad were driving me to training, and in the state program you had to go to the state tennis centre,” she said. 

“My dad would wake up at five a.m. and take me to the tennis centre to do gym three times a week. Dad would have a nap in the car, I would have a shower, then eat my Weet Bix in the car, then he'd drop me at school.  

“Then, after school, I’d catch the bus back to the state tennis centre and we’d have training in the afternoon and tournaments on the weekends. At that age, you’re starting to play nationals and get a national ranking and it requires a lot of travel. My parents sacrificed so much for me – my dad worked two jobs, he drove taxis and ran a business.” 

By year 10, Janelle was showing so much promise in the tennis space, that she switched to home schooling, to maximise her training time.  

The routine quickly became: gym, court, study, recover, repeat. But structure didn’t bother her, in fact, she quite liked it. 

“I'm a creature of habit,” she said. 

“Since such an early age, I have had so much structure. At the time, tennis was my passion and it was what I wanted to do. I split year 11 and 12 over three years and would spend all day at the tennis centre between a mixture of gym and court sessions. “ 

Achieving success in an individual sport however, can come at a huge cost. As a teenager, Janelle missed key milestones and social events because she was training or travelling for tournaments. 

For her though, the dedication she had to her sport, far outweighed the sacrifice. 

“It was quite isolating,” she said. 

“I didn’t have a school ball, I didn’t have school leavers, or the partying or friendships that came with that. I don’t regret it though. It taught me a lot about balance and discipline. I wanted to play on the professional circuit, that was my goal. 

“Tennis is a really challenging sport in the sense that you don’t just wake up one day and get into a grand slam, your ranking has to be up there. You have to travel eight months of the year to play tournaments. Your expenses are outweighing anything you're earning for a long time.” 

As a junior, Janelle played the Australian Open – one of her most vivid memories is brushing shoulders with Serena Williams while walking the halls of Melbourne Park. 

It was moments like these that she knew joining the professional tennis circuit was all she ever wanted.  

At the age of 17 though, everything changed. 

One day, as if from nowhere, Janelle suddenly lost feeling in her left leg. Heat, cold, pain…all distant memories. For an athlete so reliant on weight transfer and balance, it was a scary situation to be in. 

She underwent extensive testing with neurologists, but none were able to find the cause at the time. 

While others may have given up at this point, her resilience and strength of character prevailed. She essentially re-learned how to play tennis, but this time, with no sensation in one leg. 

To this day, the sensation hasn’t returned.  

“I've learned to deal with it,” she said. 

“I can still walk, run and kick, I just can't feel heat, I can't feel my muscles working, which is challenging in sport,” she said. 

Her persistence paid off – after expressing interest to Tennis Australia to combine tennis with a tertiary education, she was inundated with offers from colleges in the US. 

Texas A&M University was the school Janelle eventually chose – the facilities, the climate and the people all drew her in on a whirlwind visit to campus with her dad. 

College life was hard work, but she knew the time and energy would all be worth it. 

During the third year of her scholarship, she woke up one day to discover her leg numbness had progressed into a fiercely painful burn. 

Eventually, doctors diagnosed her with multiple sclerosis, a chronic illness that affects the central nervous system. It can be a debilitating condition, for which there is no cure. 

“I remember sitting in the neurologist’s office and she said ‘we've done all your tests, you've got a lesion on your spine and your optic nerve is inflamed and we think you've got multiple sclerosis’,” Janelle said. 

“At that point, I was sitting there by myself at 21 and she hands me all this information about medication and what multiple sclerosis is. 

“All I thought was ‘oh my god, I'm going to die’.” 

Janelle made the heartbreaking decision to quit tennis and focus on finishing her degree, while learning to come to terms with her diagnosis. She felt that staying in a tennis program she couldn’t give her all to, meant she would be selfishly occupying a place someone else deserved. 

But without tennis, what was there? 

“My whole life had been so structured playing tennis, studying, training and that just stopped,” Janelle said. 

“I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t deal with it overly well. I went to a lot of parties and drank a lot and did the college thing. It was pretty depressing and really challenging. I was in a shit place, it was pretty dark.” 

After almost five years in the States, Janelle moved home to Perth with her bachelor of sport management, to figure out what was next. 

For a little while, she took a break from high-level sport, going on to focus on her career – she worked across cricket and netball before later landing a senior management gig in local government. 

She began dabbling in state-league tennis, premier league soccer and carried on a love for CrossFit, which she had discovered while living in Texas.  

And just as she was settling back into life in Western Australia, something wonderful happened.  

After spending a year-and-a-half of her life believing she was living with MS, it turned out the reality was actually quite different. 

“I started seeing a neurologist in Perth and we started from scratch,” she said. 

“It's exhausting, it's a lot of tests, a lot of MRIs. After all that, they said I had a lesion on my spine, but the second test hadn’t come out the same.” 

Janelle’s diagnosis was downgraded to transverse myelitis – inflammation of the spinal cord that can cause issues with feeling and bodily function. 

Thankfully, the prognosis is generally less severe than that of patients with MS. 

“The neurologist took me off the medication and monitored me closely for a couple of years and they say the longer you go without any relapses, the better off you are,” she said. 

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A few years later in 2019, Janelle was seeking a new challenge. It was clear to her she still had more to give.  

Following a quick Google search, she jumped on the booming popularity of women’s football, and joined the geographically convenient Perth Angels Football Club. 

Not surprisingly, she was a natural. 

After just five games of footy, Fremantle selected her in the draft. 

After just two seasons of AFLW, she was All-Australian. 

It was an incredible progression for anyone, let alone someone who had been through what she had.  

Her third year at the Dockers presented some huge challenges – between covid, hard border closures, hubs, a broken nose, broken cheekbone, an ankle injury and a couple of concussions, the drain was real. 

“Last year was one of the most difficult years I've had in my life,” Janelle said. 

“Between working full time and footy injuries, I was emotionally burnt out. I sat down with my manager to talk about whether or not I could see out the season. 

“I spent some time considering what I would do next. I wrote down my values and my purpose and why I play football and why I was doing what I was doing. That made it very clear to me that I still loved it, and I wasn't done yet. I felt I wanted to go around again but I needed to make some changes.” 

After the second AFLW season in 2022, Janelle had another conversation with her manager about her future. 

“She asked me if I’d be open to talking to other clubs and I thought I’m not unhappy at Fremantle, I love the club and they supported me through everything I went through, but I felt like it was worth having a chat,” she said. 

From an initial conversation with Port Adelaide list manager Naomi Maidment, Janelle’s curiosity was piqued.  

“I think the idea of a fresh start and a clean slate was appealing to me after everything I went through last year and I thought this could be the best thing for me,” she said. 

A couple of months later, the 32-year-old left her beloved chocolate Labrador Bentley with her parents, and made the move across the Nullarbor. 

It was time for something new, and despite being a little nervous, it felt right. 

“I've always been someone that has said yes to opportunities,” Janelle said. 

“I feel like if it scares me a little bit, that’s a good thing.” 

After just 12 weeks at Alberton, she was voted in by her peers as co-vice-captain.  

Like everything else in her football career, it was fast, but it was clear she’d made a positive impact on her teammates from day one. 

“I’m in such a good space now, I’m so happy,” she said. 

“I’m loving Adelaide and I’m loving the club.” 

Be part of Janelle’s story in the making – join Port Adelaide as an AFLW member and gain access to all home and away games in 2023.