That helps explain why he’s never felt debilitating nerves around football but did feel them in solo pursuits like athletics, and is seen as a big-game player who lifts in important matches. “I love the pressure and the stakes,” he says of finals time. “The smell of the grass, the crowds, the atmosphere … every contest, there’s a bit more of a price on it.”
The other thing about the Ashcroft kids was they did all types of sports. Athletics, swimming, gymnastics, rugby union, golf – whatever was on offer. “The skills people think are a fluke, I always say they’re the result of playing many different sports as they were growing up,” says Bekky, who swam and ran at state level but says she was never at the level of her husband or kids. As a PE teacher, her advice at parent-teacher interviews is to hold off specialising too early. “Get your kids exposed to as many different types of things for as long as possible.”
It’s good advice that’s increasingly recognised in sporting circles. Roger Federer is another who played a lot of sports before focusing on tennis – and that didn’t work out too badly for him.
Ashcroft’s ability to barge into a pack and extract the ball cleanly might well reflect his multisport background, and Niall says many of the best players today have just this dexterity. But it also reflects practice. As White notes, being clean with a ball is not something you’re born with; it comes about through tireless repetition of the act.
There was tough love, too. Ashcroft recalls an athletics meet when he was 10 or 11: “I had 100- 200- and 400-metre events, and I didn’t want to run.” He’d played rugby on the Friday, footy on the weekend, and by the Monday of the meet, “I was cooked.” His mum was hearing none of it. He ran. “Little moments like that I remember where it was good to be pushed.” It was Ashcroft himself, though, who chose Aussie rules. “If you get pushed too hard and told what to do, you burn out,” he says. “You have to find it yourself.”
‘If you get pushed too hard and told what to do, you burn out. You have to find it yourself.’
The Ashcrofts moved to Melbourne in 2019 when Marcus got a talent pathways role with the AFL, pitching their kids into a much bigger, more competitive Aussie rules pond. Then came COVID-19, which hit during Ashcroft’s final two years of school. Many kids were psychologically thrown off course by that unprecedented time, but Ashcroft remained focused on his singular goal of getting drafted, taking gym gear home to train with. “Will was certainly one of the players who didn’t let up,” says White.
Not letting up also defines Ashcroft’s relentless advocacy for brother Levi, then in year 9, to be selected for the firsts when Ashcroft was in year 12 and footy co-captain. “From day one of the preseason, he was asking whether I thought Levi would make the team,” White says with a laugh. “Then it got to the start of the season, and he asked again. That question never stopped.” Levi made the team – of course he did – in a stop-start season punctuated by lockdowns.
Between school and getting drafted to the Lions, Ashcroft played for the Sandringham Dragons, with brother Levi following him there in due course. Some saw the brothers as a bit FIGJAM (“f— I’m good, just ask me”) but Mark Wheeler admired their focus. “As a 15- or 16-year-old [Will] was probably acting more like an 18-year-old,” says the Dragons’ then talent lead manager. “He was elite in his training, on and off the field, right down to weighing his own food.”
At the same time, Ashcroft started a sports management course at Deakin University and launched Wash Performance, a training app for kids aged between 13 and 18. The idea was to create a digital “coach in your pocket” that helps kids get fitter and healthier, off social media and, if it’s their thing, get drafted. “When I was young I was in the best programs, went to a great school, had really good experiences and exposure to AFL clubs because of what Mum and Dad provided, but not all kids have that,” says Ashcroft. “Kids who might live remotely, or not have enough money to be in the best programs or the best schools, don’t have the facilities but want to improve.” Ashcroft is the face of Wash, with Jimmy Creighton its head of operations and online coach. The app is about to be relaunched, suggesting it’s not yet a serious money-spinner, but new investors and plans to expand it into other sports suggest they think it one day could be. Either way, it’s a savvy play that speaks to its founder’s leadership chops, desire to help others and build a business – and eye already on the longer term.
Bekky Ashcroft wasn’t meant to be in Brisbane on Saturday for round 19 of the 2023 season. During Ashcroft’s first season with the Lions, the family stayed in Melbourne, as Levi and Lucy were still at school. But for some reason – call it mother’s intuition or just dumb luck – she made a last-minute decision to fly up for the match. She recalls watching from the stands as her son’s ACL ruptured. “We’ve been around footy long enough to know that when that type of thing happens, it’s pretty devastating,” she says. She went to the rooms after the match. “He was with the medical staff, inconsolable.”
They were told they’d have to wait until Monday to get a scan, but her son was having none of it. By 7.30am the next day they were driving to Redcliffe, north of Brisbane, “the only place that would do a scan on a Sunday”. They got the call confirming the worst on the drive back and had to pull over for a moment to process it. A day later they were en route to Melbourne, where within the week, Ashcroft would have reconstruction surgery, a few weeks after which he returned to Brisbane for the long recovery.
It must have been excruciating, watching his team march towards the 2023 grand final, then lose it, without being part of it. I ask Ashcroft what feelings were roiling around his head at the time. “It was mostly just anger,” he says candidly. “I had a vision in my mind of what my first year would look like. I was going to do this, achieve that, play every game, hopefully play in a premiership, win the Rising Star award. Things I was so locked in on … then it was all gone, bang. I thought, ‘This is not fair, I shouldn’t be in this position.’ ”
Marcus recalls how difficult it was for the family to be in Melbourne while Ashcroft was recuperating more than 1700 kilometres away. “The mental battles he went through, it was hard to be away from him for those.” It was Bekky who broke Ashcroft out of it. “I said to him, ‘You can be angry all you like, but there are people who get a tickle in their throat, or a headache, and go to the doctor and get a terminal diagnosis.’ ” You don’t have a terminal diagnosis, she told her son. “Yes, it’s one of the worst things that can happen to an AFL player, but let’s go see some people who have received a really bad diagnosis, and see what real anger and sadness looks like.”
So began Ashcroft’s relationship with the Children’s Hospital Foundation in Brisbane, which extended after his rehabilitation to the auctioning-off of his 2024 grand final boots. Inga Tracey, head of strategic marketing and communications at the foundation, says the boots auction was Ashcroft’s idea, raising more than $6000, and that he’s one of their most engaged ambassadors, visiting every few months. “He’ll bring in posters and footballs, have a chat, play Uno,” she says. “We deal with the sickest kids in Queensland. Most of them are bed-bound and it might be the only fun thing they get to do in a week.”
I tell Ashcroft his mum sounds pretty wise, getting him out of his head like that. He agrees. “Dad’s approach to football and life is very go, go, go, and I probably got a lot of that from him,” he says. “What Mum does really well is put all that into perspective. She helps me look at things from a different angle and appreciate things outside football.”
Jimmy Creighton was there for his friend during the ACL injury, too. Creighton knew something about injury: he suffered a C2 avulsion fracture playing football when he and Ashcroft were teens, and spent six months in a neck brace. “He and his family helped a lot,” Creighton says. “Will and I would swim, go to the gym together, play basketball. That really set up the friendship.” Creighton returned the favour when Ashcroft did his ACL, flying to Melbourne the weekend after his surgery. “I helped him put his shoes on, we’d go to cafes,” he says. “I just wanted to distract him from what he was feeling at the time.” Knowing how quickly life can change is something the two now share.
Marcus Ashcroft, who played in the Lions’ 2001, 2002 and 2003 premiership-winning team, was about as happy as a father can be when the siren rang on the 2025 grand final. The Brisbane Lions had beaten the Geelong Cats 122 to 75, and where, in 2024, one of his sons was on the winning team, this time it was two. “When I was a player, I thought winning a grand final was the be-all and end-all,” he says, emotion in his voice. “This was 10 times better.”
Marcus, Bekky and Lucy joined the crowd surging onto the ground after the win. Close family friend Chris Scott, coach of the losing Cats, sought them out. “Through his pain, in the middle of the MCG, he came over to congratulate Levi and Will,” says Bekky. “Football is a game but the relationships you get from it – they transcend the result.”
In the wake of that win, Ashcroft’s contract with the Lions was extended through to 2030. He also joined Always Human, the sports marketing agency that put Matildas star Mary Fowler on the Paris Fashion Week runway and in the pages of Vogue. That self-initiated move has already netted him ambassadorships with Kayo Sports and Rexona, with others in the pipeline. He’s posting more on social media, too, showcasing his training, his meals, the odd fun day out. His 91,500 Instagram followers is nothing like Bailey Smith’s 418,000 or the 551,000 who follow Christian Petracca’s cooking account, but it’s growing. If the 2026 sportsperson is as much brand as player, Ashcroft appears ready to capitalise on it.
With so much having gone his way over the past two years, I wonder what keeps Will Ashcroft awake at night. His answer speaks to a sweet earnestness and the central role of family in his life. “Making everyone proud,” he says. His family, his close friends, those who’ve helped him since he was very young. “I feel an obligation, to be honest, to pay them back, to try to do my best for them.”
I ask his father what he worries about for his eldest son, a young man so determined, so controlled, so in a hurry to achieve. Making sure he has balance in his life, Marcus says, and that he “gets through safely and develops into a nice young man at the end of it”. He thinks Ashcroft’s “learning to understand that” but worries about the pressure today’s players put on themselves. “Unfortunately with social media and such, it’s always the extremes – you’ve either done really, really well, or really, really badly. In reality, there’s so much grey in between,” he says. “Being able to appreciate that and not go to the depths of despair when you think you’ve let the team down.” One of his jobs as a parent, he says, is to help with that.
For Bekky, who’s seen the long tail of concussion and other ailments in her husband’s generation, the foremost worry is always around the risk of injury “that affects the rest of their lives”. Making sure her kids are good people first, good footballers second, is also right up there. “Yes, you got drafted and are living your dream, but it’s actually only one very small part of your life,” she tells them. Prepare for the rest of life, too.
Ashcroft will never forget the conversations he had with his mum at the end of the 2025 season. “My mindset was to celebrate, then move on to the next thing pretty quickly.” His mum made him stop and reflect back to their time together in the hospital room after his ACL surgery. Remember how hard it all was, and appreciate how far he’d come since. “She was in those moments with me, checks me on them. She makes sure I’m not in my head and that I’m being appreciative before I move on to the next thing.”
Good job, Mrs Ashcroft.
