ANDREA Slattery has coached football teams, washed jumpers for teams and kept statistics in games. With husband Paul Slattery, QC, she has reared four high-achieving sons, the youngest of whom, Henry, has played 39 matches for Essendon.

Slattery is also the chief executive officer of a financial business, but it was her contribution to the field of sport that won her a gong last night after she was named AFL mother of the year.

"It is a very busy family but Mum manages to somehow keep up with all of us," Bomber Henry, a fourth-year agricultural science student, hand-wrote on the nomination form he submitted to the AFL Players' Association.

It was an understatement.

The Adelaide-residing matriarch of the Slattery clan works many business commitments around the AFL fixture and has missed just three of her son's senior games. She travels regularly to Queensland to see James — 25, and on a scholarship to study a medicine degree — play with QAFL side Labrador, and Christopher, 27, a qualified physiotherapist as well as a postgraduate medical student.

Charles, 24, works for one of Australia's largest legal firms, DLA Phillips Fox, in Melbourne, but returns to Adelaide each week to play for SANFL side Central Districts.

When Essendon travels across the border, coaches and players always receive an invitation to the Slattery household. As many as 35 are expected before next Friday night's game against Adelaide.

Being a mother of an AFL player, Andrea says, is an ever-changing role. Early days, when she was a voluntary junior AFL development co-ordinator, she acted as a teacher and helper.

Now that Henry's football home is elsewhere, it as a "strange role where you've got to stand back a bit". "The role I have now is really as a friend," she said. "You can't really do much else. My role is mainly just to be there."