The AFL's first female premiership coach, Bec Goddard, had committed to serenading her players if they won. So in this happiest of post-match assemblies she had a promise to deliver. And did she deliver.

Adelaide chairman Rob Chapman gave a heartfelt speech. Freshly crowned premiership footballers, their families, friends, and Crows chief executive Andrew Fagan applauded. Adelaide's boss then handed the floor to Goddard.

Wearing a first-edition 'Adelaide 2017 Premiers' t-shirt, the coach perched herself on a bar stool. She hunched over an acoustic guitar then belted out a rendition of Tina Turner's 'Simply the Best' that was pitch-perfect from dramatic opening to emotive crescendo.

Less flamboyant at the joint season launch of the Adelaide's male and female teams in February, Goddard still snuck in a musical reference.

On the same night Taylor Walker and co. received their jumpers, the AFLW coach quoted the John Farnham lines she repeated on Saturday, on the premiership dais:

"We have the chance to turn the pages over. We can write what we want to write ???"

If the message in the lyrics was lost on anyone at the footy club launch two months ago it wasn't on the weekend when a heady maiden AFLW season had a gripping six-point finale.

Malcolm Blight was the last coach to deliver Adelaide an AFL premiership, in 1998. Two decades later, Goddard - one of two female coaches in the eight-club AFLW - has turned the pages over.

Extraordinarily, she has made a list split between Adelaide and Darwin work. For five months Goddard ran team meetings linking the two groups on Skype and, with rare exception, has only had the luxury of working face-to-face with her full team at games.

The coordination and communication required to make this work has been tremendous. AFLW players have other jobs, remember.

In nutting it out, Goddard thought it might help if her two camps kept similar schedules. Even if in different time zones. For Adelaide players this has meant team meetings happen after training. The Darwin gang phoned in and trained afterwards. They flew across the country to play games, then back again, every week except one this AFLW season. That it resulted in an Adelaide premiership borders on miraculous.

Sport shows us time and again how powerful coaches can be when they have aura. Luke Beveridge has it in men's AFL, Goddard is his AFLW equivalent.

She is also emblematic of the AFL's new competition because she is open, unconventional and unselfconsciously human.

Goddard rocks hot pink socks with her team uniform, has her fingernails painted in wild-coloured polish and a punk haircut.

She also handwrote personalised cards - cherished by each of her players - before the season started. Then, on grand final night, she pulled out the guitar and channelled Tina.

Adelaide astutely selected Goddard as their first AFLW coach. She communicates and connects with her footballers brilliantly and after season one she rules AFLW.

But as the singing continues in the Crows' premiership celebrations, Adelaide should move swiftly to secure her. And explore, as Goddard's football education deepens, what she can offer Don Pyke's male coaching team.

The answer is that she offers plenty. And that's not a knock on Adelaide's male coaching arm. It's a statement about how a new breed of AFL coach can make men's footy, as we've known it, better.