Well, not exactly Brooklyn and Blake, her four-and-a-half-month-old twins who were safe in the care of their other mum, Tracy. But in the rush to fly to the first AFL Players Association MVP awards for women, Phillips did forget the baby sling.

Thankfully she has a support team well beyond her retired footy champion dad, Greg, and mum Julie. Ebony Marinoff, Phillips' Adelaide Crows teammate, played link woman on this occasion, bringing an infant carrier to a rooftop where AFL boss Gillon McLachlan sat among award reception attendees.

When Phillips, 31, accepted her third major gong in 48 hours, she gave insight into how she's managed to mother, train and, in the past two months, blitz on footy fields.

Partner in life Tracy Gahan, won her vote as MVP, Phillips said in accepting a prize on Monday that could yet be followed by an AFL best-and-fairest crown.

The pair met about seven years ago as teammates for the Adelaide Lightning. Gahan, originally from Texas, was 46th pick in the 2002 American Women's National Basketball Association's draft, recruited by the New York Liberty, before joining Australia's Women's National Basketball League.

It is a very good result when Phillips can get a patchwork of seven hours sleep into one night. Gahan carried and is breastfeeding Brooklyn and Blake. But no footy game is too big, in the mind of Phillips, to get in the way of family responsibilities. Not even the first AFLW grand final, which Phillips dominated despite an imperfect build up of broken sleep.

"I always stay with them. I never sleep away from them," Phillips told Fairfax Media on Monday.

"Tracy is getting up at the moment between four to eight times a night. They don't synchronise, generally, because they're so different.

"On grand final eve Brooklyn, our daughter, was up at 1am until 3am. Tracy had to tell her: the game's at 1pm!

"I hear them, but at the moment I've only been getting up to help if they both wake up at the same time because it becomes so hard for Tracy to feed both. Our baby girl has reflux so she can't just be fed and put back down. We hold her for about 30 minutes afterwards and so many times I've fallen back to sleep with her on me or I wake up and see Tracy sleeping upright with Brooklyn hanging on."

Not long after the twins arrived the quartet moved into Greg and Julie Phillips' home for the extra helping hands.

An Australian Opal at the 2008 Olympics, Phillips used to have routines that bordered on obsessive. They flew out the window once the twins arrived. Phillips has accepted reality and, to her surprise, it has worked for her. Saturday's best-afield performance in the most important game of AFLW yet is just the latest example.

"I figured I was just going to have to go with the flow," she said on Monday. "I used to be a stickler on routine. From what I ate to when I ate. But when the twins came I was like: 'nup, I can't do this, it's not going to work!'. And as soon as I let go of that things became better. If I didn't eat at the right time, or if I had to make a sandwich with a baby under my arm and I didn't make it right, or if I didn't have time to go and get the proper bread for my sandwich I just used whatever was in the fridge or pantry, that's all fine now.

"Honestly, I just look at them and everything is fine after that. I've got nothing to worry about. I've got two healthy kids.

"Even if it's some ungodly hour in the morning, if they're smiling or laughing at you it just melts your heart, and I don't even care. Someone told me once: you can always get back sleep, but you can never get back time."