ERIN Phillips has lived the perfect story. Chapter by chapter there is ripping yarn after ripping yarn ... and the book is not complete yet.

Chapter 1. Born in Melbourne in May 1985 while her father Greg is playing VFL football with Collingwood, Erin Phillips is at the feet of the Port Adelaide players after Greg returns to Alberton to become an SANFL premiership captain. To live through a four-flag run from 1988 to 1992 - while she is three to seven-years old - gives Phillips a life-lasting understanding of the cultural ethos of winners. She learned well.

Chapter 2. While she was as comfortable as any boy with a Sherrin in her hand, the path to Australian football was a dead end for Phillips once she turned 13. She ultimately became a pivotal part of the change that gave Australian football its long overdue growth with diversity.

Chapter 3. Without Australian football it became basketball. At 17, Phillips was playing in the Australian national league (WNBL) - and by 22, she had three times earned selection in the league's team of the year, including in her debut season at the Adelaide Lightning.

Chapter 4. Adelaide becomes too small for her extraordinary talent - the call to the USA arrives with her name called in the 2005 WNBA draft. Phillips won two titles in the States - the first in 2012, the second in 2014 ... when Australian football realises it has denied itself plenty as an all-male sport.

Chapter 5. Why stop at club sport when basketball offers the world stage, particularly with the Olympics. In 2006, Phillips is a world champion at the FIBA World Cup in Brazil where Australia beat Russia in the final. She joined the Olympic club in 2008 at Beijing earning a silver medal with Australia's loss to the USA in the final.

Chapter 6. By 2015, the dream of being a professional Australian footballer - following in the steps of her father Greg at Alberton - was a reality. Phillips became the first female to sign a player contract at Port Adelaide in anticipation of leading the club to the new AFLW ...

Not every story in this tale is true to wishes.

Phillips finally claimed her Port Adelaide jumper - the No.1 guernsey with a tear-jerking reveal to her father on the terraces at Alberton Oval - in 2022 for the seventh season of AFLW.

"Proud ... proud as," says Greg Phillips of the mark his daughter has left on Australian football. "The whole family is proud. Yep, proud as punch. We have watched Erin grow up with a footy in her hand, then no footy, basketball, back to footy, captain Port Adelaide and achieve so much in the AFLW. It is just an unbelievable story. Proud as. Proud as can be."

The path to Port Adelaide took even longer than waiting for the AFLW, but patience does have its rewards.

The previous six AFLW seasons were with the deep-seated rival "down the road" at West Lakes where Phillips not only led a formidable group of football pioneers, but she also gave the AFLW incredible credibility with her sporting class. Her resume will forever read as a record of excellence.

First winner of the AFLW's equivalent to the Brownlow Medal in 2017 - and again in 2019.

Premierships in 2017, 2019 and 2022.

Twice best in the AFLW grand final - in 2017 and 2019. Not just the best player of the season, but the superior player in the most important game on the calendar. And in between Phillips overcame a knee injury that would have left many others seeking the comfortable path to retirement.

All-Australian honours in 2017, 2019 and 2021.

And to this day Phillips commands the admiration of her peers for her command of Australian football after reaching peaks in other sports.

At Adelaide, fellow AFLW pioneer Stevie-Lee Thompson remains in awe of all Phillips has given to Australian football.

"Erin Phillips is an amazing athlete," Thompson says. "From basketball to AFLW, everything Erin has shown has changed the game - and the way women are seen in the game. That is amazing.

"I look at Erin today and still see she is killing it. 

"Compared to a lot of people I have known in life, Erin is one of my favourites."

Phillips has been much more than a pioneer or groundbreaker or ceiling breaker in Australian football. She ended the debate on whether women could play with the boys in Australian football - a task she did so well in the Slowdown charity game at Adelaide Oval in 2004 - by highlighting there was no need for mixed football.

Unlike so many others, Phillips had football skills that had been honed from those days as a toddler running through and around the strong legs of her father Greg at training sessions at Alberton Oval during the late 1980s. The Sherrin sat well in Erin Phillips' hands.

Phillips was so eloquent in closing the debate at the end of the inaugural AFLW season in 2017. And the question of whether a female player could cut it in the hitherto all-male AFL - with the answer commonly suggesting Phillips could be the one - did not ring as a compliment either.

“We have a league of our own," said Phillips. 

"It’s not realistic — and I am not even sure it is flattering,” added Phillips to deal with the question of a female in the men's league. 

"I’ve said before, in my opinion I don’t think I could play in the AFL. And I don’t even like to compare (men and women footballers).

"We have a league of our own. I’m part of a league that fits for me – and for other women. It is a league in which women compete against other women. The AFL is for men to compete against men.

"I have the AFLW. And with the AFLW, that means my daughter(s) will never have to face the same moment if she chooses to play footy. That’s why I have loved the AFLW. That opportunity for women to follow their dream means more to me than the question of whether I could make it in the AFL.

"I don’t clearly remember the moment when mum and dad sat me down at 13 to explain why I couldn’t play footy any more with the boys. It was confusing to me and frustrating.

"But I am so glad I will never have to say that to my daughter(s) if (they) ever decide to play. Giving that opportunity to women is why I have loved the AFLW - and why this league means more to me."

Phillips also has served as a social conscience while the AFLW, as a new league, and its players, as new sporting role models, were subject to horrid abuse on social media.

Phillips five years ago - while then Carlton-star Tayla Harris was the target of social media trolls - stood up against bullies and sought change to a disturbing dark room in sport and society.

"I’ve got two kids and I worry for them one day if they’re ever going to go on social media and what they're going to be able to read," Phillips said.

"So I’d love to see a Twitter profile or an Instagram profile or any kind of social media profile that is linked to who you really are, so that you can be tracked down and penalised if you’re going to go on there and be racist and sexist and just say terrible things. That would solve a lot of the problems I think.

"The social media companies have got to play a part as well."

Chapter by chapter the Erin Phillips story reads of much more than a sporting great. Her once-denied chapter in senior Australian football ends this week as a player with her 20th AFLW game in the Port Adelaide jumper - and 66th senior AFLW match in total. But the story in Australian football would seem far from complete given Phillips is developing her coaching profile in the Port Adelaide men's program.

Phillips came to Alberton - after an ultra-successful start in the AFLW elsewhere - to "make my own legacy here at the club". She spoke of a football career that was about "giving it a go and having no regrets."

"If I didn't try it," said Phillips on leaving professional basketball for the new AFLW, "I would always regret it ... and I have based my whole sporting career on having no regrets and giving it your best."

Phillips' legacy in Australian football goes well beyond Port Adelaide. Her contribution to Australian football will be recognised with Hall of Fame status - and deserves to be on the AFLW medal that today carries no name.

"Erin had not kicked a football for 17 years when she started again in the AFLW," Greg Phillips recalled. "To win the first AFLW medal was a reward for her professionalism while transferring from basketball back to football. That professionalism set the standards for the AFLW. Her work rate - her commitment to a weights program, running, diet and everything to get her body right for football - gave the AFLW an early benchmark that we now see being lifted by a new generation of players.

"Yes, Erin is a gifted sportsperson. But she also brought a professional attitude to the game. She made a group of players realise that they have to work harder and train harder to keep the standards of this competition rising. And they will ... it will be nice for Erin to watch that and understand the part she played in setting that standard and ambitions of a new generation of players who grew up watching her play."

At Alberton, however, the name Erin Phillips on the honour board resonates with the power of a grand achiever and a legend to match any of those who started the Port Adelaide story in the late 1880s.

Another chapter is written. The full story is still to unfold in this book of ripping yarns.