This weekend the AFL celebrates Women’s Round, a chance to acknowledge the many females who play a leading role in Australia’s game.

One of those women is GIANTS housemother Melissa Lambert who has played a critical role in player welfare and developing an outstanding culture at the AFL’s newest club.

GIANTS TV caught up with Mel ahead of AFL Women’s Round to find out more about her role at the GIANTS and what makes the working mother of four tick.

“My role at the club is to give these boys the skills that they need to live out of home like cooking and paying bills, basically anything that their mums would normally do for them,” Mel said.

“My favourite part of the job is watching the boys develop and watching them go from being the naïve, inexperienced young boys that they were when they arrived in to young men who can cook and lookafter themselves.”

In the exclusive GIANTS TV interview, Mel recalls some of the more amusing phone calls she has received from the young players since she arrived in Sydney in November 2011.

“When boys ring me telling me things aren’t working, I always go over there first before I ring repair people. The Townsend Cameron apartment rang me saying that their oven was not working.

“When I went over there, I looked and there was a switch, clearly marked oven, turned off. I would have given them the benefit of the doubt other than the fact on one side the toaster was plugged in and on the other side the kettle was plugged in. The oven switch was underneath it turned off.

“They were quite baffled when I turned that on.”

Melissaalso paid tribute to the many women who help to make AFL great at a professional and grass roots level.

“There are a lot of great women involved in sport at all levels.

“The ones that inspire me the most are the mums at local footy that get out there andwork in the canteens, wash the jumpers and act as first aid officers.

“They don’t get any recognition for it, they just do it because they know if they don’t do it, their kids don’t get to play sport. I think they are reallyinspiring,” Melissa said.