'Nothing I could do': Erin Phillips opens up on 'awful' moment suffered by her and wife
She's also a two-time WNBA champion in basketball, and won a gold medal at the FIBA world championships in 2006. Since retiring she's made a successful transition into the media, becoming a star of Channel 7's footy coverage.
She has four kids with wife Tracy, and showed off her beautiful family when she was inducted into the AFL Hall of Fame in June. But speaking on Channel 7's 'Unfiltered' program this week, the 40-year-old revealed for the first time the heartbreak and pain of losing an unborn child.
Phillips revealed that Tracy miscarried with their fourth pregnancy, which occurred just three days before she helped the Adelaide Crows made the 2022 grand final. 'It took us two years before we had (twins) Blake and Brooklyn, and we had multiple unsuccessful pregnancies where we couldn't even get pregnant," Phillips said.
"We tried. We moved on to the IVF route, which is more expensive, obviously. (We were) maybe a bit more hopeful in the chances of becoming parents, and we end up getting five embryos. We tried for two, and we were just hopeful to just get one, and we won the lottery. We got two, we got Blake in Brooklyn.
'I thought, after all the sleepless nights and ... just how crazy life was, I thought maybe we'd be done at two, because looking after kids is a full-time job. And so we decided to have another one. So we go for three and then we had Drew straight away, no problem. And then we tried for number four, thinking that this is easy, like the hard part's done.
"We've had one, two and three. All the three embryos took. Why wouldn't number four take? And initially it did. And then three days before the prelim in 2022, three days before we played Fremantle in the prelim at Adelaide Oval, Tracy miscarriages.
'And it was one of the most just devastating, hardest, awful moments to see your your wife, your partner, go through that. As her wife, there was nothing I could do to make it better. You just feel so helpless to see her go through that.
'We got to the obstetrician thinking it was a regular scan, (but the scan is) saying there's no heartbeat anymore. And it was like, it was a shock. It was like, we can't possibly be hearing that, surely not."
"Tracy miscarriages and it was one of the most devastating, hardest, awful moments. To see your wife go through that, as her wife, there was nothing I could do to make it better, you feel so helpless."An incredibly brave Erin Phillips opens up about one of the most challenging… pic.twitter.com/lczfDGRsf9
— 7AFL (@7AFL) August 13, 2025
Erin Phillips 'didn't talk about it to anybody'
Phillips said she kept the devastating news a secret and put all her energy into the preliminary final. 'We didn't talk about it with anybody," she said. "We didn't want to tell people what we were going through, because we didn't really want people to worry.
"I didn't want anyone to feel like that something was wrong, and I had a prelim, and I know that seems so irrelevant, a game, and it is in many respects, but it was also a big game that I wanted to find the energy and the willpower to go and perform and bring some joy into back into our lives.
'And and there was also this element of, you know, we were so lucky. We've already got three kids, you know. We miscarried our fourth. Should we even be feeling like we were unlucky or should we even be grieving.
'There were so many emotions going on at the time when we won the grand final, it was like the final siren was the moment that I could actually just grieve. You know, I just, I just wanted to bring some joy back in that moment for Trace and what we just been through. And football seemed like such a small part of what we were going through, but we were able to celebrate and find some joy in that moment."
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Erin and Tracy eventually overcame the loss and welcomed fourth child Londyn Skye in 2023. 'Our family is complete,' Phillips wrote on social media at the time.
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