From Track Star to Talent Scout: Meet the Devils' Hidden Weapon

As the Tasmania Football Club continues to build the foundations that will underpin the success of the Devils into the future, a host of high calibre women are playing crucial roles in the journey to first bounce. Among them is the multi-talented Lizzie Dingeldei, a rising star in the football industry.

Lizzie Dingeldei vividly remembers her first meaningful footy experience – a VFL match at Sandringham’s Trevor Barker Oval.

Her father packed her favourite colouring book to keep her occupied but ‘Little Lizzie’ found her stimulation elsewhere.

“That was quickly put away because I was just totally hooked on the game,” Dingeldei said.

It was that early childhood experience that has given rise to a blossoming career in football. Dingeldei is what the Tasmania Football Club affectionately refers to as its number one draft pick. She was the Devils’ first official employee.

To describe her role succinctly is too tall a task, let’s just say it is multi-faceted – admin operations, logistics, football – a jack of all trades kind of gig.

Dingeldei has also been dabbling in talent identification, assisting the Devils’ Head of Recruiting Derek Hine and Head of List Management and Strategy, Todd Patterson, scout the underage prospects that will form part of Tasmania’s first AFL and AFLW teams.

“Getting eyes on this group now is so important,” she said.

“But also keeping in mind that there is going to be so much future development potential and trying to identify the players with significant upside.”

Recruiting is the 27-year old’s passion. After interning at the AFL in game analysis, Dingeldei spent three years working for the Oakleigh Chargers and in talent identification at the Geelong Football Club.

At the Cats, she learnt much from the methods of veteran list manager Stephen Wells and one of his key talent scouts Liam Woodland, who was poached by Fremantle last year.

“Liam was really good at guiding me through things, giving me as many opportunities as possible,” she said.

“Watching match vision, coding, writing match reports, analysing testing data… [I was] making comparisons between players in the current draft class and players in their positions that had been drafted previously.

“Toby Conway I was comparing to Brodie Grundy in his draft year and just looking at those numbers and seeing whether they aligned.”

At the 2021 draft Dingeldei was entrusted with lodging Geelong’s official selections and remembers the sense of nerves each time she entered the player’s details.

“The panic, oh my god! What if I have just typed in the wrong name,” she said. But her fondest memory from working with the Cats came in the same year’s rookie draft.

“I like to claim that I picked Ollie Dempsey… I did a lot of work on him that season because he only played school footy,” she said.

“I watched a lot of his Carey [Grammar] games and thought he was really good.

“Every now and then I send Liam a message and ask when do I get my Ollie Demspey bonus?”

Dingeldei, who studied exercise science and sports management at university, has delved much deeper into the art of recruiting than merely determining whether a player can run, jump, kick mark and handpass.

She merged her passion with her studies, submitting a compelling thesis on understanding the attributes that make a player ready for match selection.

“You’ve found the player, they’ve been drafted but what separates the ones who are great from the ones that don’t actually make it,” Dingeldei explains.

“I was looking at those attributes, physical, psychological, technical, tactical and so I interviewed nine players from an AFL club to get their perceptions on these attributes.”

It is this attention to detail and thirst for knowledge that helped her form a strong bond with highly regarded recruiting doyen Scott Clayton, who is working for the Devils as a consultant.

Clayton, a former Tasmanian player, has worked in the AFL system as a recruiter and list manager across multiple clubs for more than three decades.

“He’s been mentoring me… and I’ve been very lucky to have him,” Dingeldei said. “He’s just so knowledgeable, he’s got a wealth of experience but he still wants to learn more so he is always looking for a new way, to find a new perspective, just those little one percenters that could make all the difference.”

When she’s not watching underage football games or wearing her many other Tasmania Football Club hats, Dingeldei spends Saturdays in winter playing the game she loves as a dashing winger for Hampton Rovers.

She’s also a talented track athlete, a national champion relay runner with a personal best in the 400-metres of 54-seconds.

Working in a profession historically dominated by men has given Dingeldei a purpose greater than football.

She wants to be a role model for other young girls to discard their colouring books.

“There were no female role models working in football but now the tide is changing and you’ve got Laura Kane and with Kath [McCann] working for Tassie, we’ve got these women in power,” she said.

“I want to be that trailblazer so when there’s another little Lizzie growing up they are like ‘I want to do what she’s doing’ not ‘I want to do what he’s doing.”