AFLW’s newly crowned most courageous player has already embarked on a program to take her game to a new level when the 2021 season begins.

Fremantle midfielder Kiara Bowers made her long-awaited AFLW debut last year after three knee reconstructions and has since fulfilled her early billing as one of the stars of the competition.

The ferocious 28-year-old topped the voting by her peers for the AFLPA’s most courageous player award after a 2020 campaign that yielded a record 99 tackles before it was brought to an abrupt halt by the coronavirus outbreak.

“I don’t think I’m going backwards any time soon,” Bowers told AAP.

“I’m just as fit as I was and just as strong.

“If I can put on a couple more kilos that might be a bit helpful ... but I believe (I can improve) and the off-season is always good to get those things in check.

“I am actually really lucky that I really like training, so I spend most of my days at work (as a carpenter) and then straight after work I go to the gym at home.

“There’s lots of running, biking and weightlifting.”

Bowers, nicknamed ’Turbo’ by her teammates, led the tackle count in each of Fremantle’s seven games this year, racking up double-figure tallies on every occasion.

Her unprecedented haul included a single-game record of 18 tackles in the Dockers’ thrashing of cross-town rivals West Coast in the first women’s Western Derby.

Bowers plans to continue putting fear into her opponents with an insatiable appetite for the contest that she attributes to growing up as one of nine siblings.

“Wrestling with them makes it easier to go out there and tackle,” she said.

“Growing up in a big family with a lot of older brothers, you’ve got to fight for what you want.”

Bowers said she was “shattered” by the anti-climatic ending to the 2020 season, with unbeaten Fremantle denied a shot at the premiership because of the coronavirus shutdown.

But she tipped the Dockers would be in contention again next year.

“We’ll go out of the season upset with the way it finished but also very happy that we were able to go out there and not be beaten,” Bowers said.

“At the end we were a really strong team and we can go into next season just as strong, if not even better and harder to beat.”