Adelaide Crows triumph over adversity in AFLW, but a complete reset is needed after the league's most-difficult season yet

«We did it,» cried a jubilant Ebony Marinoff to Erin Phillips. «We've got three, baby, we've got three».

After six seasons of the national AFL women's competition, there have been five grand finals.

The Adelaide Crows have made four, and won three.

Such a record means this team will deservedly go down in history as the first juggernaut of the AFL women's competition.

However, while all three premierships may be equally memorable, 2022 may, in hindsight, be seen as the greatest of all given it was achieved in the face of significant adversity for the playing cohort.

From an optics point of view, almost nothing seemed to go right in AFLW season six.

The season start — originally planned December 2021 — was delayed because of a Delta-variant outbreak of COVID-19.

Erin Phillips never set out to play for Port Adelaide's fiercest rival, but won't be drawn on whether she'll switch allegiances when the Crows' cross-town rivals enter the competition.

When it finally got rolling in January 2022, Omicron wreaked havoc.

Players and clubs were struck down in unprecedented numbers, just as rules changed to allow positive cases out of isolation after seven days.

As a result, AFLW players were not eased back into competition, but thrown, full-bore into an exceptionally aerobically demanding game.

On ABC's The W Podcast, Bulldogs captain Ellie Blackburn described her first game back from COVID a «horrible experience».

Of her symptoms of breathlessness and fatigue, she said: «I just felt like my body gave out on me.»

Then — as a result of games being postponed and delayed, and in an effort to get the season finished — players were asked to front up to mid-week games, despite most having part or full-time jobs.

Fremantle and West Coast arguably made the