Kezie Apps

Kezie Apps (born in Bega in February 1991) is (in January 2025) the co-captain of the Jillaroos, the Australian women’s national Rugby League team (the current world champions, having won the last three Women's Rugby League World Cup tournaments), and the NSW Sky Blues, the NSW Women’s Rugby League team.

‘I was born with League in my blood,’ Apps suggests, ‘because Rugby League has been a huge part of my family life’.

Her Father, Geoff, is ‘a Rugby League-mad father’, and her two older brothers, Deon (who played for the South Sydney Rabitohs in 2011) and Ryan (who captained the Group 16 representative side in 2015) were both exceptionally talented players.

‘We used to play footy in the backyard all the time. They (her brothers) both played Junior Rugby League for the Bega Roosters, and my dad also played. I wanted to be like them, and they encouraged me to sign up at the age of 8, although Mum (Dawn) wasn’t too impressed!’, Kezie recalls.

Kezie was a teammate at the Bega Roosters to Dale Finucane who later played League from 2012 to 2024 for the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, the Melbourne Storm and Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks. He remembers Kezie, now a great mate, was then ‘head and shoulders above anyone else on the field – boy or girl…She wasn’t just better than me, she was better than all of us. She was one of the best players in the team…She was a really good tackler. She put a lot of force in them...(and) there was another girl in the comp as well. Actually, a lot of the guys were jealous because they were both usually better than us.’

Kezie’s Rugby League playing days, however, came to an abrupt halt when she turned 12, because the League had age restrictions on girls playing the sport with boys. So, Kezie then turned to playing hockey (‘that was the sport my girlfriends were playing’) and tag-league (a non-contact alternative to the traditional game, focusing on speed, agility, and tactical gameplay; she became captain of the Bega Chicks team).

A decade after having had to quit Rugby League, Kezie was watching the Jillaroos win the World Cup for the first time and suddenly realised that she COULD play full contact League again. So, she joined the Helensburgh Tigers - travelling from Bega to Helensburgh every week to play, necessitating a 5½ hour drive each way!

After just a few months of joining the Helensburgh Tigers, Kezie Apps was selected to play in a representative squad that competed for the State Cup. The Illawarra team won the competition and Apps was named Most Valuable Player at the tournament.

Then, in the space of one season, she was named the Illawarra Women's Player of the Year, NSW Women's Player of the Year and was selected to represent Australia in the Test against the Kiwi Ferns.

In 2016, Apps won the Women's Dally M Medal Player of the Year award and in 2017 was selected as a player in the Australian Women’s Rugby League team. She has captained or co-captained the Sky Blues since 2020, and has co-captained the Jillaroos since 2022.

Kezie lives in Bega. She and her partner run a dairy farm. (At one time Kezie had a full-time job at Bega Cheese. Her grandfather, Ron, was once the ‘dairy farmer face’ of Bega Cheese and her brother, Ryan, once featured on a Bega Cheese label).