Chloe Molloy was soaring. Competition rising star, Collingwood best and fairest – in her first year of AFLW, no less.

With a smash, a crackle and a snap, an injury to a part of the foot that Molloy hadn't heard of sent her star plummeting back down to earth. Football? The then 19-year-old suddenly couldn't walk to pour herself a glass of water.

Chloe Molloy, 20, says opening up to a sports psychologist has been invaluable since being sidelined in September. AAP

Her Lisfranc injury, a fracture in the mid foot – "I had no idea what, or who, a Lisfranc was" is the gag she reels out not for the first time, by her own confession – in Collingwood's VFLW preliminary final in September last year meant 12 months out of the sport the teenager had just began to conquer.

"I was the person that thought, 'I don't need to talk to anyone, what would I even talk to a psychologist about?'" explains the normally effervescent Molloy, now 20.

"Not that I was against it, I just thought I'll never need that, it's not for me, I can sort my own issues out. But in a time when you feel so alone, you need someone to talk to. I could talk to my friends, but I kind of needed to implement strategies on how I was going to get through it."

Having also polled second in the competition-wide best and fairest in 2018, Molloy's absence has left an excruciating hole in the Magpies' defence as they scramble to avoid recording the first winless AFLW season against Brisbane at Victoria Park on Sunday afternoon.

"For me, this injury's probably been 80 per cent mental and 20 per cent physical, just because for the first few months I was so immobile that I could barely do anything," Molloy says.

"Going to the fridge to get a drink of water was the hardest part of my day."

Along with creating a new opposition analysis coaching role for their most valuable asset during the AFLW season, Collingwood connected Molloy to a sports psychologist early in her rehabilitation.

If you’ve got things and challenges going on, definitely talk to someone and don’t feel silly, because I kind of felt silly at the start.

"A typical line that someone says is, 'It's going to be OK' ... a lot of people say, 'You know, it's going to be OK, you're going to run, you're going to do this' – but I would think, 'No, no, right now, it is so not OK'. Only the sports psychologist would understand that.

"She [the psychologist] helped me understand the emotions I was going through, and that it was normal.

"I felt pretty alone, like I was going crazy, just because you start to feel like 'God, just get over it, so many people get injuries'. But the psychologist told me it was fine to feel like that, that it was a really bad injury."

Familiar territory: Molloy watches from the sidelines at a Collingwood pre-season training session. AAP

Molloy's message resonates in aleague where players are subjected to professional demands, but semi-professional training hours.

Last year's injury records indicate AFLW players are 9.2 times more likely to sustain an ACL injury than men in the AFL, and Fremantle's Alex Williams last week became the sixth AFLW player to rupture hers this season.

Once the seven-week AFLW regular season finishes, players – such as this year's No.1 draft pick, Geelong's 18-year-old Nina Morrison (ACL) – complete their rehabilitation either privately or in a VFLW environment.

Consigned to a moon boot until late last year, Molloy has previously described the first two weeks after the injury as her "grieving" period, unable to walk or drive.

For Molloy, who was on the brink of pursuing a college basketball career in the US before choosing AFL in 2017, the opposition analysis role has been twofold: along with bettering her "football IQ", it's kept her connected to the team, where she remains part of the leadership group.

"I'm very grateful for Collingwood ... for my development and I guess a bit for my mental health. They've given me something to keep me distracted in a way, to not have to stay solely focused on rehab. I have a role on game day, instead of just sitting there sad and sorry that I'm not out there."

Molloy last month resumed light running and kicking without pain.

"I'm hoping I'll be out on the field soon, not behind a computer," she says.

Molloy says she'll "definitely" be fit for the next AFLW pre-season; precisely the steely optimism that had evaporated during her personal grieving period.

"I couldn't preach it enough, that if you've got things and challenges going on, definitely talk to someone and don't feel silly, because I kind of felt silly at the start. But once I did it, it made me feel so much better," she says.