Dad hoping Aaliyah’s ‘X-factor’ will shine on big stage

Leon Jones is not just your typical proud dad — although he does cheer his daughter on at the footy from the sidelines. He’s backing her to go as far as she wants to. With a couple of hundred league games for Towns in the Great Northern Football League, a WAFL stint and a basketball career that included playing for the Geraldton Buccaneers, he knows his stuff. He also coaches his daughter, 17-year-old Aaliyah, in the Great Northern Women’s Football League, where she’s won two club best and fairest gongs and a league award in just two seasons, and he’s got the support of his club president and a club great. Now, Leon is hoping Aaliyah can make a mark in the big city. He said the success of Dongara’s Roxy Roux with Fremantle showed the opportunity was there for women from the region, while the WAFL might also be an option. “She does want to move to Perth to, hopefully, give it a crack,” he said. “If we do move, hopefully (she) would pursue one of those careers.” A Yamatji man with Noongar ancestry, he said he saw the traditional Indigenous flair on the field in the way Aaliyah played. “They’ve (Indigenous players) got that X-factor,” he said. “Aaliyah probably has that with the girls.” Towns president Kandi Cullen said she believed the younger Jones could take the game as far as she wanted to go. “She’s a leader within our group,” she said. “She takes direction from the coaching staff. The club would support her in anything she wants to try and achieve. “Women’s football is getting bigger and bigger everywhere, and I think she definitely has the skills to take that to Perth and beyond, if that’s what she wants to do.” Towns league coach and former East Fremantle and Collingwood forward Dale Baynes, who grew up with Leon, said he was a “great club man” who was pushing 300 games with Towns and had also played WAFL with East Fremantle and Perth. “As a younger player he was extremely skilled,” he said. “Quick, great footy brain, which he’s obviously adapted into his coaching now.”