Bendigo Thunder captain Shae Murphy puts in the hard yards to 200 games

In no small part due to the fact she has been there nearly every step of the way.

The 28-year-old last weekend stepped into territory few of her former teammates have entered, when she lined up for her 200th female football game.

Now into her 16th season, Murphy, who last season travelled down from Rochester to play for the Thunder, reached the milestone in last Sunday's clash against Woorinen.

While the Thunder lost to the Tigers, the athletic defender/midfielder led from the front to be named her side's best player.

The milestone was the latest accolade in a career that has taken many intriguing twists and turns.

Born and raised in Melbourne's western suburbs, Murphy first started playing junior football with Altona.

Like many girls of her vintage, she spent her first few years playing with the boys, before having to walk away from the game.

Fortunately, the establishment of a youth girls team at Altona proved her saviour, allowing her to stay at the Vikings, where she played for five seasons.

Her senior career has included stops at Port Colts, St Kilda Sharks, Drysdale and VFLW clubs Geelong and Williamstown while living in Melbourne, and later Diamond Creek, after the move to central Victoria.

While this is only her second official season with the Thunder, Murphy had trained with the club 'on and off' for about five years while living in Rochester.

"I still travelled back and forward for a season when I first moved up to Rochy," she said.

"I had a stint in Darwin and then I had (daughter) Blaire, which is why I'm here now."

While looking for a club to continue playing, Murphy admits her choice was pretty much a 'no-brainer'.

"I actually grew up playing against the Thunder," she said.

"At Altona and Port Colts we played against the Thunder in what was the VWFL north west region.

"So when I made the move up here, the only place I was going to was the Thunder, given their history and how successful they'd been.

"I've always known them as a strong club and they were the only club for a while.

"I always had respect for them and actually when I played my 100th game in 2013 it was against the Thunder."

Ticking off her 200th game was a proud moment for Murphy and certainly one she never dreamed about when first lacing up a pair of boots back in her childhood, when pathways to senior football for girls were either unclear or non-existent.

While she knows of few others to have played 200 games, she is thrilled and eternally grateful that others will now get that chance, and potentially among them, Blaire, should she choose to follow mum into football.

"Obviously the young girls coming through now, having played boys footy and youth girls and all the way through, there will be tons of girls racking up the games," she said.

"But not a lot of my mates have got there.

"I'm just mad about it (footy). I'm at the other end of my career and want to be a good captain and would love to win a flag, but I'm really just playing for fun now.

"I was just a little girl that wanted to play football and now my daughter has that opportunity."

Among her other highlights, which have included coaching and representative team selections, Murphy was among 30 players selected for the inaugural women's Australian rules football tour of the US in 2017.

The current CVFL Women's season has already proven tougher than most others before for Murphy, whose house was one of the many destroyed in last year's floods in Rochester.

Football has provided her with not only a passionate and useful distraction from the turmoil, but a unique form of therapy.

"My house in Rochester got flooded in October - it's still stripped out and doing nothing," she said.

"I'm not sure what the next couple of years will look like, but I will get back there eventually.

"It's been a wild ride ... 90 per cent of the people are still displaced.

"Hopefully we can get people into their homes so they can utilise the shops and get business back into town."

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